Ovrelia's Notes in the Margin

End of the Year Wrap-Up 2011

2011-12-30T14:35:00.001-05:00

In 2011 I read 117 titles. It is 31 titles less than last year. Nevertheless I read the same 50 000 pages as I did last year. I guess my books were fatter in 2011. The most books I read in November (14 titles), the least – in September (4 titles).

I didn’t nearly do as good as I hoped with my reviews – life kept getting in a way. Don’t get me wrong, I do not complain. The life that was getting in the way was a good life. I will exchange an ideal blog with a lot of reviews and discussion posts that is updated every day in a heartbeat for a life like that. And this is what I actually did. Maybe next year I will be able to have a life and at the same time write reviews for almost every book I read – time will show.

According to goodreads.com out of 117 titles I read I gave:
5 stars (It was amazing!) to 15 books;
4 stars (I really liked it!) to 46 books;
3 stars (I liked it) to 44 books;
2 stars (It was ok) to 7 books;
1 star (I didn’t like it) to 5 books.

Out of 117 titles 16 were rereads, including the whole set of Harry Potter and the first book twice (yeah, I know, I have a problem :)

Out of 117 titles:
44 Classics;
15 Young Adult;
17 Children;
14 Fiction;
6 Non-Fiction;
5 Sci-Fi;
4 Mystery;
4 Paranormal;
3 Romance;
2 Horror;
2 Graphic Novels;
1 Fantasy.

Favorite from Classics:
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Most disappointing from Classics:
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Favorite from Young Adult:
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Most disappointing from Young Adult:
Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia

Favorite from Children:
The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1) by Philip Pullman (not to mention Harry Potter, but since Harry Potter books were reread, I picked The Golden Compass).
Most disappointing from Children:
The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White

Favorite from Fiction:
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Most disappointing from Fiction:
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Favorite from Non-Fiction:
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
Most disappointing from Non-Fiction:
Back to the Best Books by Marilyn Green Faulkner

Favorite from Sci-Fi:
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
Most disappointing from Sci-Fi:
None

Favorite from Mystery:
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
Most disappointing from Mystery:
Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson

Favorite from Paranormal:
Dead and Gone (Sookie Stackhouse, #9) by Charlaine Harris
Most disappointing from Paranormal:
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

The longest book I read this year was Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. It had 1472 pages and it took me 13 days.
Even though The Iliad by Homer is much shorter than Les Misérables, it took me eight month to finish it, so it was a book a read for the longest time this year.

The shortest book (I only call it a book for consistency, even though it is not even a short story) I read was Harry Potter: The Prequel by J.K. Rowling. It had 800 words and it took me 1-2 minutes.

Plans for next year? Nothing specific, just read what I want, as much as I want and post when I want - total freedom and no obligations.

Happy New Year everyone!

Here is the full list of books I read in 2011:

January 2011
1. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
2. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
3. Fall for Anything by Courtney Summers
4. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
5. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
6. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
7. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
8. Neuromancer by William Gibson
9. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
10. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
11. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

February 2011
1. The Graduate by Charles Webb
2. The 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade
3. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
4. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
5. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
6. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
7. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
8. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
9. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
10. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
11. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

March 2011
1. Fantômas by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain
2. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
3. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
4. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
5. The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien
6. The Red and the Black by Stendhal
7. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
8. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
9. Angelique: The Marquise of the Angels by Sergeanne Golon
10. Angelique: The Road to Versailles by Sergeanne Golon
11. What Maisie Knew by Henry James
12. Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

April 2011
1. Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
2. A Lear of the Steppes by Ivan Turgenev
3. The Distant Hours by Kate Morton
4. Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham
5. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
6. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
7. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
8. Oroonoko by Aphra Behn
9. The Secret Lives of Men and Women: A PostSecret Book by Frank Warren

May 2011
1. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
2. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
3. Back to the Best Books by Marilyn Green Faulkner
4. Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead
5. Gone by Lisa McMann
6. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
7. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
8. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
9. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
10. Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
11. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
12. The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

June 2011
1. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
2. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
3. The Trial by Franz Kafka
4. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
5. 1984 by George Orwell
6. Emma by Jane Austen
7. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
8. The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

July 2011
1. Sutter Island by Dennis Lehane
2. Looking for Alaska by John Green
3. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams Bianco
4. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
5. A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
6. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
7. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

August 2011
1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter #1) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré(Illustrator)
2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter #2) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré(Illustrator
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter #3) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré(Illustrator
4. Harry Potter and the Gob let of Fire (Harry Potter #3) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré(Illustrator)
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter #5) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré(Illustrator)
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter #6) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré(Illustrator)
7. Harry Potter and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter #7) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré(Illustrator)

September 2011
1. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
2. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
4. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

October 2011
1. Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson
2. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
3. Immortal Beloved by Cate Tiernan
4. Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia
5. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
6. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
7. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
8. Dead and Gone (Sookie Stackhouse, #9) by Charlaine Harris
9. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
10. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter #1) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré(Illustrator)
11. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales by Joss Whedon

November 2011
1. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
2. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
3. The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide by Eva Talmadge, Justin Taylor
4. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie,Ellen Forney(Illustrator)
5. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
6. I am Legend by Richard Matheson
7. Dungeon Master's Guide by Gary Gygax
8. Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose
9. One Day by David Nicholls
10. Damned by Chuck Palahniuk
11. 40 Love by Madeleine Wickham
12. The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde
13. Harry Potter: The Prequel by J.K. Rowling
14. The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White

December 2011
1. The Golden Compass(His Dark Materials, #1) by Philip Pullman
2. The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame
3. Trapped by Michael Northrop
4. Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind
5. Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter
6. 11/22/63 by Stephen King
7. The Iliad by Homer
8. The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, #2) by Philip Pullman
9. Matilda by Roald Dahl,Quentin Blake(Illustrator)
10. Watchmen by by Alan Moore,Dave Gibbons (Illustrator),John Higgins (Colorist),Len Wein (Editor)

Top Ten Childhood Favorites - Top Ten Tuesday #8

2011-12-06T06:00:00.000-05:00

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

Top Ten Childhood Favorites

This turned out the hardest Top Ten Tuesday I’ve done so far, the hardest in terms that I only have to pick ten. First time I set down to think about this list I ended up with twenty five items and I was only picking best from the best. Second time I was able to narrow it down to seventeen by not simply removing book titles from the list, but by removing parts of myself. All the books I clearly remember from my childhood are my favorites. So let’s see if I will be able to stop just at ten… Here we go in no particular order:

The Old Genie Hottabych by Lazar Lagin. This is a Russian book, which was translated to English. The story is set in 1960^th Moscow. One day “a schoolboy named Volka Kostylkov, the very same Volka who used to live on Three Ponds Street, you know, the best diver at summer camp last year” finds a very strange looking copper vessel. While trying to clean it, he frees (yes, you guessed it right), a genie that was imprisoned in the bottle for thousands of years. This is a hilarious and amusing story about a character from One Thousand and One Night loose in the middle of contemporarily Moscow (or not as much contemporarily nowadays). A couple of my favorite moments: First, when a genie and Volka go to the soccer match. While unaware of the soccer rules, a genie conjures a lot of balls, so every player would get a chance to play with its own and doesn’t have to chase the only ball on the field. Second, when Volka is nervous about his geography exam, Hottabych offers his help, by overtaking Volka’s voice and speaking on exam instead of him. The hilarious part is genie’s geography knowledge – the earth is flat and it stands on whales, turtles and elephants.

One Hundred Years Ahead by Kir Bulychev. This is another very popular Russian book. I couldn’t find it in English translation though. The story is set in 1980^th Moscow. One day a boy Kolia Gerasimov accidently finds a time machine and goes a hundred years in the future to take a quick pick. He ends up in the middle of galactic conflict when last two space pirates are trying to steal a device called "myelophone", a mind-reader from a girl who works with it - Alisa Seleznyova. To save the device Kolia takes it and runs to hide it in his own time. Pirates who know how Kolia looks, but don’t know anything else about him, follow Kolia. Alisa who knows the first name and the school where Kolia goes, but doesn’t know how Kolia looks, follow the pirates. The story is full of adventure, mystery and humor.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. I guess everyone know this story and I don’t have to write synopsis for this. I probably reread this book hundred times (not from cover to cover, but only my favorite moments). I had a copy with original illustrations by John Tenniel and I still remember a Cheshire cat’s smile.

Karlson on the Roof Series (including Karlson on the Roof, Karlson Flies Again and The World's Best Karlson) by Astrid Lindgren. “Imagine Smidge's delight when, one day, a little man with a propeller on his back appears hovering at the window! It's Karlson and he lives in a house on the roof. Soon Smidge and Karlson are sharing all sorts of adventures, from tackling thieves and playing tricks to looping the loop and running across the rooftops. Fun and chaos burst from these charming, classic stories.” This is one of the most hilarious books that I read as a child.

Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne. This is another widely known story and also another book that I read dozens of times till wholes in my copy (even though I was very careful), crying every time for poor sad Eeyore.

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. As far as I can remember and I can’t be absolutely sure, Peter Pan was the first book I read from beginning till the end by myself (It wasn’t read to by my mother or my other family members). This is the book that sparkled my love for reading. Before that I only had love for stories but not for reading itself.

The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolf Erich Raspe. “Baron Munchausen's astounding feats included riding cannonballs, traveling to the Moon, and pulling himself out of a bog by his own hair.” Even though this story was originally a satirical work with political aims, for me, as a child, it was impossible and funny adventures, which gave a boost to my imagination.

In Search of the Castaways; or the Children of Captain Grant by Jules Verne. “A message in a bottle relays an urgent plea from the long-missing Captain Grant. His ship, the Britannia, has sunk. He is alive but is being held hostage. Captain Grant's children, Mary and Robert, along with their friend and benefactor Lord Glenervan launch a rescue expedition. But where do they begin their search? The original SOS message written in three languages is partially destroyed by sea water. The remaining fragments can be interpreted several ways. Only one clue is certain, Captain Grant is somewhere along the 37th parallel. Racing against time, risking their lives, the brave adventurers are determined to find and save the shipwrecked captain.” The high adventure in sea and on different continents, when I was thirteen, I read it, holding my breath.

Lisa and Lottie by Erich Kästner. The Parent Trap movie is loosely based on this book.“When they meet for the first time at summer camp, two ten-year-old girls discover they are twins and agree to exchange identities in an attempt to reconciliate their divorced parents.” This is a very touching and humorous story at the same time.

Various Fairy Tales by Aleksandr Pushkin, Charles Perrault and The Brothers Grimm.

Here we have a list of ten, but I still cannot finish this post without at least mentioning The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Jungle Book and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling, The Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlöf, The Neverending Story by Michael Ende and many more wonderful books that I love since my childhood and will always love and reread.

Book Blogger Holiday Swap Gifts

2011-12-02T22:07:00.001-05:00

The package has arrived today from Alyce (At Home with Books). After almost tearing open the package, I found three beautifully wrapped parcels inside. You would have to believe me here, because I didn’t stop tearing at the box, so due to my enormous impatience I have no photographical proof of it. Here are my gifts:

Holiday Cookie Cutter and Towel Set – at first, I looked at cookie cutter and didn’t recognize what it was at once, after couple of wild guesses, I read the label and thought: “Hmm, this is going to be interesting.” You see, I don’t bake. No, not on a matter of principal, I just have never tried. After examining a towel closer, I found a very detailed recipe (thank you designers for considering even customers like myself, who had never rolled dough or greased baking sheet). So with this delightful discovery I thought that I might even try making Snowman Sugar Cookies.

I guess Alyce somehow knew that I don’t know how to bake. So just in case I won’t master a courage to bake myself, she sent me some Wafers with Chocolate Crème.

Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter. This is the second instalment in A Heist Society series. I liked the first book, it somewhat reminded me (not in terms of plot so much, as in overall impression) of How to Steal a Million movie with Audrey Hepburn.

Trapped by Michael Northrop. I wanted to read this book since I first heard about it, but somehow never got to getting it. A group of teenagers stuck at school during an awful snowstorm and things just starting to get bad – chilling – a perfect winter read.

Alyce also sent me her all time favorite - The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper. I have never hear about this book before, however synopsis sounds very interesting, somewhat reminding me of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. I will definitely read it.

Last, but not least a very adorable card with Christmas stockings.

Thank you, Alyce, for such wonderful gifts.
Happy Holidays and Happy Reading!

Book Blogger Holiday Swap 2011

2011-11-07T16:26:00.000-05:00

Come one, Come all!

It's Book Blogger Holiday Swap!

The holiday season is upon us and Book Blogger Holiday Swap is here. You can read about it and join the fun at the Book Bloggers Holiday Swap. Hurry up, the sign up ends on Midnight, Friday November 11, 2011.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan _ Book Review #136

2011-11-02T07:30:00.000-04:00

A Visit from the Goon Squad

by Jennifer Egan

Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive.Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. With music pulsing on every page, A Visit from the Goon Squad is startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption.
From goodreads.com

A Visit from the Goon Squad was lying on my desk for a very long time, waiting to be read. I can’t intelligibly tell you why it took me so long to pick it up. I guess I was afraid that it wouldn’t be a book for me. I could’ve being afraid to read it during a wrong mood to spoil my impression. I might’ve being afraid it would be too sad. All of the above, none of the above? I really don’t have an answer. However, I do know that I’m glad I finally read it, this would be a tragedy to miss out on such a phenomenal book.

If I would be asked to summarize the book, I would use the quote directly from it:

They resumed walking. Alex felt an ache in his eyes and throat. "I don't know what happened to me," he said, shaking his head. "I honestly don't."
Bennie glanced at him, a middle-aged man with chaotic silver hair and thoughtful eyes. "You grew up, Alex," he said, "just like the rest of us.”

This quote really nicely summed up a book for me – it is about growing up, not growing up from child to teenager, but growing up from a teenager into a middle-aged adult. I cannot fully judge (I didn’t yet reach my middle age, though I’m not a teenager anymore either), but somehow A Visit from the Goon Squad rang very true and honest, sometimes scary, sometimes sad, sometimes funny, hopeful and optimistic.

A Visit from the Goon Squad has a nonlinear narrative. If I would be asked before I read this book what I think about books with nonlinear plots, I would’ve answered that I generally don’t like them, that I mostly confused and feel a need to reread a book again now knowing what the author is talking about in each section. Now, after I read A Visit from the Goon Squad, my answer is I never before this book read any GOOD books with nonlinear plots. Jennifer Egan even went further, she also switching points of view during narration. And if it isn’t enough yet, this book is following at least dozen characters. Despite that, I wasn’t confused for a single line. I always knew what time we are in and whose point of view used here. Jennifer Egan is a genius. I’m very grateful to her for showing me how such a complicatedly constructed book can be written so masterfully that it reads so easily.

This book is mostly famous, besides its winning Pulitzer, for having an entire chapter created in Power Point. I wasn’t too impressed with this idea before started reading the chapter. I never really worked with Power Point myself, however any serious meeting in my company usually includes a Power Point presentation. I never was really impressed with Power Point presentations, because they never really aid me to understand the topic of the meeting, they were usually distracting me – I was reading boxes and arrows in wrong sequence then I had to stop and try to figure out what the right sequence is – like solving a puzzle, while missing what the presenter was saying. I’m working for a very big company, so even though I do not know people who are usually creating these Power Point presentations for meetings, I would guess that they should be pro in doing it. Jennifer Egan in A Visit from the Goon Squad, showed me that Power Point presentations can be created without becoming a puzzle, they can even tell, doing it very clearly, a story. She showed me that a good Power Point presentation doesn’t require an aid of speaker – it can be read by itself.

I’ll probably never stop praising this book, if I won’t stop myself deliberately. A Visit from the Goon Squad is a most definitely the greatest book I read this year so far that was published in last 5 years. I would still have to see what the rest of the year will bring, but A Visit from the Goon Squad could easily become my favorite book of 2011. If you still didn’t read it, go get it right now and start reading – satisfaction guaranteed.

Top Ten Books I Had VERY Strong Emotions About - Top Ten Tuesday #7

2011-11-01T06:00:00.000-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

Top Ten Books I Had VERY Strong Emotions About (cry, laugh, hurl across the room, etc.)

I like books that generate strong emotions in me. I even like these books that I want to burn. (Don’t get me wrong I’m utterly against destroying or banning books. It is just sometimes I hate a book that much that I want to burn or drown my own copy. Fortunately or unfortunately I’ve never done it.) In my opinion there is nothing worse than a book that makes you *shrug* and forget about it in next five minutes. Unfortunately, most of the books written are in the shrug category, at least for me. So I have a respect for authors and books that made me feel something more, even if the feeling is negative. Here is Top Five Books that Made Me Laugh, Top Five Books that Made Me Cry and Top Five Books that Made Me Want to Start a Bonfire.

Top Five Books that Made Me Laugh:

Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov. I was reading this book as an assignment in 10^th grade. My mother was running into my room multiple times to check that I wasn’t choking, because I laughed so hard. This book isn’t a comedy. It is a satire on Russian Revolution.
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. First I saw the play, when I was in middle school, then I saw the movie and only after that I read the play. And every time I laughed out loud and I still think that this is probably one of the funniest things that I’ve ever read.
The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella. While I was reading this book, my husband was running into the room where I was reading to check on me, same as my mother did, when I was reading Heart of a Dog. I’m either sounding really scary when I laugh like that or I have a very caring family.
Shopaholic Series by Sophie Kinsella. I was waking up my husband with uncontrollable giggles, while reading first book in bed. I couldn’t shut up about this book afterwards, so in the morning I was retelling the funniest moments to my husband and either I was very convincing or Sophie Kinsella is so funny, but at the end my husband decided to read it too.
Moscow to the End of the Line (aka Moscow-Petushki) by Venedikt Erofeev. This is another satire, this time on the USSR life during 1960^th. I guess it is really depends on your point of view is this book going to read hysterically hilarious or depressively sad. It was both for me, maybe a bit more funny than tragic.

Top Five Books that Made Me Cry:

What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson. This is a book about afterlife and about power of love. These two are very cheesy themes, however Richard Matheson managed to tell this story in a very touching manner, avoiding clichés and not ignoring a very solid research base.
Poetry by Sergei Yesenin. I loved Yesenin very much. I’ve reread my copy of his poetry collection so many times that it started to fall apart. His farewell poem makes me cry every time (I don’t really like this translation, but this is the only one I was able to find):

“Goodbye, my friend, goodbye
My love, you are in my heart.
It was preordained we should part
And be reunited by and by.
Goodbye: no handshake to endure.
Let's have no sadness — furrowed brow.
There's nothing new in dying now
Though living is no newer. “

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I knew the story before I read it. Who doesn’t at least vaguely familiar with it? I wasn’t expecting much from the book when I finally decided to read it. However, the end hit me pretty good and yes, I actually cried, cried not as much for Frankenstein’s monster, but more for unjustness and unfairness of life.
Looking for Alaska by John Green. This book didn’t really make me cry, I just had a terrible lump in my throat almost the whole time I was reading it.
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver. Tears after finishing this book weren’t tears of sadness; they were tears of anger, tears of fury. Spoilers! I couldn’t believe that this book came to a such a corner where the only way of resolution was for a strong willing to live girl to sacrifice her life for a weak girl who didn’t value her life at all and was about to commit suicide. End of Spoilers!

Top Five Books that Made Me Want to Start a Bonfire:

Fallen by Lauren Kate. I don’t even want to comment on this one, because I already wrote a review (the only thing that changed since my review – I understood that I cannot read either second or thirds book in this series).
On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I also wrote almost all I thought about this book in my review – a book with self-centered, chauvinistic pigs for characters.
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Another required reading for school – 11^th grade. Believe me, I understand the tragedy described in the book, but I just simply couldn’t read this boring repetitions. Maybe I was too young for this, maybe I would view it different now or in 10 years, who knows?
Germinal by Émile Zola. And one more required reading for school – 9^th grade. Mines, cold, diseases, hunger and rapes– mine 9^th grade’s psyche wasn’t able to sustain it.
By The Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead by Julie Anne Peters. Oh, the eternal whining of spineless character!

Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson - Book Review #135

2011-10-25T11:34:00.000-04:00

Before I Go to Sleep

by S.J. Watson

'As I sleep, my mind will erase everything I did today. I will wake up tomorrow as I did this morning. Thinking I'm still a child. Thinking I have a whole lifetime of choice ahead of me ...' Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love - all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may only be telling you half the story. Welcome to Christine's life.From goodreads.com

This book created a major hype over the summer. It was on almost all must read lists. There weren’t a day passing without someone mentioning it. Before I Go to Sleep was promoted as fast, nail-biting, edge-of-the-chair-sitting thriller that you won’t be able to put down. On top of everything its main subject was amnesia – one of my favorite subjects. So naturally, I couldn’t walk pass this book – I had to read it. Alas, it didn’t live up either to my expectations, nor to its promotion for me.

First of all I want to get out on the open that Before I Go to Sleep wasn’t a bad book. It had an incredibly good pace, almost too good to be true. The story was always moving forward, no slacking or backtracking. Not the story, but its pace was precisely what made it a fast read and what was preventing me to put it down. The story is a whole different…hmmm…conversation.

First aspect that I didn’t like about this book was that the story was simply way too predictable to me, so unfortunately I cannot join the club of people screaming: “OMG I totally like didn’t like see it coming!!1!” It didn’t even take me first fifty pages to be certain on how it is going to end, down to almost every detail. Second, Before I Go to Sleep was one of these books that had facts and events conveniently falling into place at precisely correct moment, our main character didn’t even have to do anything, everything was there for her when she needed it to move the story forward. From previous statement, here is a third aspect that I didn’t like – a very weak incapable character. I understand that Christine's situation is beyond being simply bad, however for me it is more reasons to act, to try changing something, to be at least a bit more aggressive in finding out at least something, to demand proof of everything from everyone and cross check these facts. Unfortunately, the only thing Christine does is sits and writes in her journal. Though I have to admit that her tactic to sit on the bank of a river and wait seems to work out well for her. After all, her enemy's corpse did float by.

The bottom line is if S.J. Watson will write something else, I will check it out, because he seems to be a talented writer, he just needs to work a little bit harder on his story. I would recommend this book for these who wants a fast read and will not scrutinize events in the book, but will just follow the author’s lead without any questions asked. If you are in the mood of something like that - Before I Go to Sleep will be perfect for you; if not, read something else.

Top Ten Books Whose Titles or Covers Made Me Buy It - Top Ten Tuesday #6

2011-10-18T06:00:00.000-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

I judge books by their cover or title all the time. I know that it is childish and silly. I know that I’ve been wrong too many times, but I still cannot help it – I do that. I guess it is understandable. If you didn’t come to a bookstore for the specific book, you have too many options and if you don’t know anything about books on a shelf, the only way you can narrow your options down is by cover and title, unless you are very persistent and will go through each and every book, reading synopsis. So I can safely assume that at least half of the books that I own, I picked up because of their cover or title. It doesn’t mean that I buy or read every book with the cover I liked, it only means that I will pick an unknown to me book up with appealing to me cover or title from a bookstore’s shelf to examine it and make further decision if I want to read it. Here are top five books I picked up because of tier cover and top five that I picked up because of their title.

Top Five Books Whose Covers Made Me Buy It.

1. Fallen by Lauren Kate. One of the most gorgeous covers I’ve ever seen, hiding one of the most awful books I’ve ever read. The main thing that I love about this cover is color scheme - all shades of blue. I also loved the dead forest on the background with tangled branches and crows. I like the pose of the model, that she is shown in the profile and we don’t see her face. I do not like faces on covers.

2. Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick. I’m a very big fan of black and white photos and if they have a touch of read, it is becoming something that really mesmerizes me. This is precisely the reason why I picked up this book and why I liked Sin City (the movie).

3. The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff. I loved the foggy background and Victorian looking perambulator standing under the tree on the carpet of dead leaves. And certainly the center of attention is a knife, scissors and other utterly inappropriate tools hanged above perambulator as if it was a baby mobile.

4. Outlander (20^th anniversary edition) by Diana Gabaldon. I missed outlander when it was first published – I was too young and no one in my family read it, none of them ever were into romances. One day I was browsing B&N site and saw this gorgeous deep red and gold cover. It was simplistic from the first sight; however it had beautiful ornaments on the background.

5. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I love books. I love old books with yellow pages and moldy covers. I love books on my books’ covers. ‘Nough said.

Top Five Books Whose Titles Made Me Buy It.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. Before I knew anything about Gabriel García Márquez, I heard this title. I think it was in some movie or TV series, I don’t really remember now. I think I was around eight or nine years old. But I remembered the title, somehow it sounded magical and poetical. Now that I know and love Gabriel García Márquez and his works, almost every title of his books sounds like that to me. Listen to this, read it out loud: Love in the Time of Cholera, The General in His Labyrinth, The Autumn of the Patriarch, etc.

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough. I read it only once in Russian translation. In Russian, the title was a bit different – Singers in a Blackthorn – a literal translation of Russian title in English. For me, to sing, means you are happy and to sing in the middle of a bush full of thorns (bad surroundings or unpleasant circumstances), means that even in something completely devastating there is always a light, there is always a hope and so is happiness. For me this title was very metaphorical.

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin. I was always interested in amnesia and in the process how humans collect and store their memories.

The Devil Wear Prada by Lauren Weisberger. I really liked the mix of paranormal with the name of fashion designer in this title. Even though the book turned out to be something utterly different from what I expected from the title, I liked it. I watched the movie later and even though I love Meryl Streep, I didn’t like the movie as much.

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare. I liked this title because it invoked something primitive, something primeval in me (bones), mixing it up with something civilized, something refined (city).

While I was thinking about today’s topic, I came across some books which titles repelled me from buying/reading these books, either ever, means I still didn’t read them; or for quite a while, means I needed a lot of convincing to pick a book up. And even though I know that I probably got titles of half of these titles, if not all, wrong, they still repel me. So as a bonus, here are these books:

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. I never liked stories about animals. When I was in the elementary school, we were made to read a lot of stories about animals, and not the ones in which animals are humanized, but the naturalistic ones. They were boring and tedious for me. Water for Elephants title made me think that this book is going to be not only about animals, but about care for animals, as in bringing water to elephants. I wasn’t too far off in my assumptions.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I do not like self-help books and by its title this is what I thought this book is going to be. I do not like when one person is teaching me how to live my life. I do not like when any religion is imposed on me (the pray part indicated that to me). I have enough of religious solicitors coming to my house, offering to save my soul, so I don’t need that in books as well.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett. This title made me think about looking for help, asking for help, which essentially means being helpless, not providing help, for some reason. I do not like reading about helpless characters, about passive characters. I want to see characters who make the difference, who fights for their happiness, even if they are losing at the end.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. This title made me think that the book is going to be focused on a passive wife, a wife that sits and wait for her husband to come home, waits for her husband to notice her, waits for her husband to start her life. I do not like when women portrayed like this in fiction, even though I know that there are plenty of women like this in the real life, I just don’t like reading about these women.

Looking for Alaska by John Green. I already wrote about this book last week: “I was thinking that Alaska in the title was referring to the state Alaska (silly me). So when I was thinking “Looking for Alaska (the state)”, I was imagining something of Jack London’s style and I really never liked it. ”

Do titles or covers make a big influence on your decision to read/buy a book?

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - Book Review #134

2011-10-12T08:32:00.000-04:00

The Handmaid's Tale

by Margaret Atwood

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now...
From goodreads.com

I read a fair share of dystopian novels in my time. Some of them were better, others were worse, but none of them ever looked at least remotely real to me. Yes, I could see where authors were coming from – what flaw in our society they choose to explore, but I could never really believe that it might go that far, it might become so grotesque. The Handmaid's Tale was different.

Not only the world created in The Handmaid's Tale was believable, it is very realistic. Maybe the US have a way to go to reach The Handmaid's Tale reality, but other countries not only almost there, but have been there for decades and centuries. Women’s roles are very limited and assigned. They are not allowed to work, have property or money. They are denied education and not allowed to read. Sounds familiar, isn’t it? (I don’t want to point fingers at anyone here, just stating facts as I know or see them.)

"There is more than one kind of freedom...Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it."

The only unrealistic part of The Handmaid's Tale for me was how fast new reality took over. I guess the problem might be in the narrator Offred. She is passive, she only tries to get by without fighting and she is broken. However, she can clearly remember how it was before. This is very hard to understand, for me personally. On the other hand, I can see how Offred is a perfect narrator for this story. She is not your regular dystopian rebellion; she is just another human being with human longing for simple happiness, not a battle.

“I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name; remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me.”

For me personally the most terrifying thing was always a silence. It also goes the other way – when I’m truly scared, I don’t scream or cry – I’m going completely silent. The Handmaid's Tale made me feel this terrifying silence of the world down to my spine. Even stores’ signs are silent – they only have pictures no words. In most of the dystopian books main character at one point or another running into the issue who he/she can confide to, but in The Handmaid's Tale this desperation, inability to trust, to talk to anyone is shown the best.

“All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.”

The Handmaid's Tale might be a difficult book to read for some. The narrative is switching from past to present without much of notification. The ending is ambiguous, which might be viewed by some as unsatisfying. The Handmaid's Tale is also considered by few as an offensive book to women. For me it was perfect: the switches in the narrative came smoothly and were at the right places of the story; the ending was opened for hope. As for it’s been offensive, I would agree with that, however I don’t think that this book should be viewed in this light. I think it should be viewed as a warning, same as all dystopian books meant to be. I think it should be read by all women and most of men.

Top Ten Books I Wish I Could Read Again For the First Time - Top Ten Tuesday #5

2011-10-11T06:00:00.000-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

Top Ten Books I Wish I Could Read Again For theFirst Time

A couple of weeks ago the topic of Top Ten Tuesday was TopTen Books I Want To Reread. That topic and today’s one might only sounds thesame, but for me actually mean two very different things. Books I Wish I CouldRead Again for the First Time not necessary mean that I will ever reread thesebooks. I might've even tried rereading them at some point, got disappointed andnever finished rereading. Books I Want to Reread, for me, means that I want toreread these books, even though I know I would not feel the same, have the sameimpression as I did when I was reading them for the first time. So without anyfurther ado, I’m presenting Top Ten Books I Wish I Could Read Again for theFirst Time, in no particular order.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Eventhough this book is known to almost everyone in US it was very hard to find inRussia some years ago. It was first published in Russia in 1960 in a nationalliterary magazine. I’m not sure if it was ever published in a book form in Russia untilrecently, however it was impossible for me to find Russian translation tenyears ago. I went high and low, searching for Russian translation – nolibraries had it, none of my relatives had it, no friends of my relatives, notfriends of friends of my relatives, not even neighbors of friends of friends ofmy relatives. Finally, my, at that time boyfriend, now husband, was able to finda Russian translation for me – a pirate document in the internet. That was myfirst experience with The Catcher in the Rye and even though the quality of thedocument left much to be desired (translation itself was good, thanks god), I read it inone sitting and loved it enormously. Afew years ago, I found and bought the first US edition. I reread it and eventhough I still love The Catcher in the Rye, the experience was very differentfrom the first one.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Anotherbook that widely popular in US and for some reason is known to a few inRussia. I first heard about this book when I already was in US and I read itfor only one reason – everyone here seems to know this book and I had no ideawhat they were talking about. After I finished it, I remember that I was unableto read anything else for a month, nothing seems to be good enough, and everythingelse seems pale and boring.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I read it only oncewhen I was fifteen or sixteen, but I still remember what an impression thisbook made. Only Nabokov could have written such a beautiful book on such uglyand controversial theme.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. This book made me “Whoa!”(an exclamation of surprise) not once. Now I know the plot, so sadly I wouldn’t go “Whoa!” even once. Iwish I could read this book again for the first time.

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. This one has oneof the best twists in the entire book history, in my opinion.

The Eight by Katherine Neville. I heard aboutthis book for the first time just about the time when the second book The Firewas about to be published – twenty years after The Eight was first published. Iwas walking around my favorite bookstore and noticed it. I was a bit hesitantto read it for the first time (book is twenty years old and I never heard aboutit – it must be not very good, was my thoughts). However, after starting toread synopsis: “A dabbler in mathematics and chess, Catherine Velis…” I knewthat I’m going to like this book. My love to mathematics is only a bit lowerthen my love to books, so it is pretty high and even though I myself neverplayed chess seriously, I was always fascinated by people who does. With thisbook, it is not as much as I want to read it again for the first time, I want todiscover it for the first time, discover something so unexpectedly that I wouldlove so dearly.

Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling. Should Ieven bother to say something about it?

Looking for Alaska by John Green. I’ve beenhearing and seeing the title of this book for years, until only this year when I finally read it. I didn’t know anything about this book with an exception ofits title and an army of fans who was considering this book one of thebest ever. I’ll tell you the truth, the title was the thing that was stoppingme from reading this book for years. I was thinking that Alaska in the titlewas referring to the state Alaska (silly me). So when I was thinking “Looking for Alaska(the state)”, I was imagining something of Jack London’s style and I reallynever liked it. So it only took me about four-five years to overcome my prejudiceand read what now became one of my favorite books.

Some Girl Are by Courtney Summers. I discovered CourtneySummers almost two years ago and immediately fall in love with her first book CrackedUp to Be. Some Girl Are made my favorites list. Her books are the most brutal,honest and nail-biting out of all YA I’ve ever read.

Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer. Yes, I lovedTwilight Series (second and third book the most) first time I read it, withexception of fourth book – it made me sick. It is only later, when I tried toreread this series all the flaws started to stare at me from the pages. Ithappened before the whole internet joined into Hate Twilight frenzy. This is precisely why I want to reread it forthe first time again – I don’t want to see these flaws. I want to swallow itwhole again without actually tasting it and be left with pleasant, however vague, aftertaste. I want to read it without analyzing, scrutinizing or thinking.

Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald - Book Review #133

2011-10-05T15:40:00.001-04:00

Tender Is the Night

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s,Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise.
From goodreads.com

Scott Fitzgerald began writing Tender Is the Night in1925 – the time of roaring 20^th, Scott Fitzgerald’s time. It wasfinished and first published in 1934 – the time of Great Depression, JohnSteinbeck’s time. So I guess it is somewhat natural that the book met a lot ofnegative reviews, most based on: “We have nothing to eat here, we are dyingfrom hunger and you are writing about rich bored people, who are shopping,laying on the beach and going to parties on the French Riviera, while still desperatelyunhappy.” And I guess we all can see the critics’ point of view, however, I cannot deny seeing Fitzgerald characters’ aswell.

From the first sight, it is hard to like Tender Is the Night’s characters – they are rich, they have no high purpose in life, theyare wasting their time and complain a lot. On the other hand, if we stop judgingthem (from our purposeful, no time wasting and every second dedicated to helpothers less fortunate then ourselves point of view) and really try to putourselves in their shoes, we will realize that we are really not that differentfrom these characters: we are too trying to make right choices and we are tooliving with burden of consequences from wrong ones. We are, same as Tender Isthe Night’s characters, very rarely looking at our lives from the perspective ofhow much more fortunate we are comparing to other people. We all are too busywith our own pain to notice someone else’s. Then why would we blame Dick,Nicole or Rosemary to be an unworthy characters, to be unlikable? They are veryrealistic and drawn with brutal honesty.

For me, the major role in understanding and sympathizingwith these characters played Scott Fitzgerald writing style. If Tender Is theNight wouldn’t be in Fitzgerald’s prose, it would be just a whiny story aboutsome rich brats. These characters broke my heart. They are so desperately unhappy,trying to understand why. How could we not be compassionate to them? I just couldn’t dismiss the book on the groundsof it being about shallow, rich people with dumb problems. I had to take thesecharacters into my heart; I had to try stopping my tears from falling on thebook’s pages for their shattered lives.

There is a polemic going on, from the time TenderIs the Night was first published, between critics on which Scott Fitzgerald’sbook is superior - The Great Gatsby or TenderIs the Night. I can’t say which camp I belong to. I had a big space in my heartfor The Great Gatsby and now Tender Is the Night has joined it. (Should I make iteven more clear how much I loved it?)

Top Ten Book Endings That Left Me with My Mouth Hanging Open - Top Ten Tuesday #4

2011-10-04T07:00:00.000-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

Top Ten Book Endings That Left Me with My Mouth Hanging Open

The Broke and Bookish comments on today’s topic: “because of the cliffhanger or because it the ending was MINDBLOWING, etc.” I choose to mention only books with mind blowing endings and not to talk about cliffhanger endings for number of reasons. First of all, I’m sick and tired of series (each and every book nowadays is a part of some series and a number attached to it – 2, 6, 50, 1000 – yeah sometimes it feels that some series consists of thousand installments). Second of all, most of contemporary series’ writes are completely misunderstanding the definition of cliffhanger. To end an installment on a cliffhanger doesn’t mean to end it in the middle without any closure whatsoever, to end it as if you were writing and then got tired or got enough words and decided to stop. It also doesn’t mean that this current installment shouldn’t have a climax and should end just before one, in this case the book is not complete, and you just have first so many chapters. To end an installment on a cliffhanger means to end it in suspense. It still means that a book should have the beginning, the middle and the end, only in case of a cliffhanger, the end shouldn’t only wrap up the story, but also reveal something new, something suspenseful. But enough about this, let’s talk about ending that blew my mind away.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. The whole book was mind-blowing for me. However the ending made me shiver, not because of a fear, but because of the excitement. The circle is now complete – this is the only thing I will say about this ending, to do not spoil the book for these that haven’t read it yet, but planning to do so.
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. This story has one of the most forceful endings. You didn’t see that coming, however it all makes sense and because of that you want to live in the different, better world where such things would not only be senseless, but would also be impossible.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. I watched the movie before I read the book, completely unintentionally; I didn’t know what I was doing. The movie’s ending blew me away and I couldn’t believe that this is the end. I didn’t want to believe that this is the end, even though it made sense. It turned out that the movie is closely based on the book, so the end was the same. And even though I already knew how it will end, it still left me speechless, because in case of the book it was final, it was set in stone, it was how Ken Kesey wrote it and no space for interpretations or assumptions was available.
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck – one of the most controversial and powerful endings that I’ve ever come across off.
Atonement by Ian McEwan. As most of the readers, I swallowed the bait Ian McEwan so masterfully planted and didn’t see that coming at all.
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. The power of this ending lies for me in the Edith Wharton’s flawless writing style. There were no surprises, only pure beauty of words.
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Only after completing this list I realized that I have two books by John Steinbeck here. However I couldn’t remove either of them. This guy definitely knew how to end his stories.
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane. The story is pretty much the same as with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I kept thinking that maybe I misunderstood something in the movie, however book proved that it is exactly as I saw and understood in the movie. I guess I’m just too big of a sucker for happy endings.
The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin. The story begins same as for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Shutter Island. I watched the movie first. However, in this case I didn’t start reading the book to confirm or rather to disprove my apprehensions. I started to read The Stepford Wives, because the end in the movie didn’t make much sense to me. The book’s mind-blowing ending lay in complete opposition of the movie’s and instantaneously made sense.
Almost any book by Agatha Christie. Agatha Christie is one of very few authors whose mysteries I could never guess correctly. I can have multiple guesses on who did what to whom; however these guesses are usually wrong. I read almost every book Agatha Christie ever written, because she always surprises me and nothing ever is as it seems in her stories.

So which book endings blew you away and why?

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - Book Review #132

2011-09-28T11:55:00.001-04:00

The Book Thief

by Markus Zusak

It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .

Narrated by Death, Markus Zusak's groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a young foster girl living outside of Munich in Nazi Germany. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she discovers something she can't resist- books. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever they are to be found.

With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, Liesel learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids, as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.
From goodreads.com

Experimental fiction is what The Book Thief is called by many reviewers. Experimental fiction, which deliberately seeks to break established writing conventions, is not for everyone. Experimental fiction writers more interested in reinventing writing craft than in being understood. However, some of these literally experiments later on becoming established writing conventions for specific genre or style and some gets forgotten as an unsuccessful attempt. This is not for me to decide to which category The Book Thief will belong, this is time’s business. I can only share my opinion and hope to be either prophetic or afraid to be called improvident.

I read my fair share of experimental fiction. My reactions are always unpredictable: I might love the book from the first sentence and be surprised that it considered an experimental fiction, because it reads so natural to me; I might hate the book from its very beginning till its end, without even a vague clue why “that” was published and how anyone can call “it” a book; I might also start reading a book with a neutral attitude and by the end the book, the story might grow on me and I would call it an ok book. The Book Thief fell into the third category for me. Yes, I finished it and even did it without any disgust. However the only feeling left afterwards was * shrug *.

Disclaimer:

I am a soulless, heartless bitch that didn’t care about poor orphan girl’s story set during holocaust in Nazi Germany.

End of Disclaimer

and continuation of rant (what? You expected an actual book review?).

I guess the reason why I didn’t care about the story or cry, as many people claim to do after finishing The Book Thief, is my quite wide knowledge of the WWII events and stories –real people’s stories read from multiple non-fiction books, the story of my great-grandmother who lived through the war and real stories of veterans who went through this war. And the stories of these people were so much more horrifying, the situations of these people were so much more desperate than Liesel Meminger.

I wish I could at least say that Markus Zusak picked an original narrator for the story – Death, but I can’t, because Terry Pratchett (and he is not the only one, I just cannot remember anyone else at the moment) did this a decade earlier. I wish that I could call the voice of the narrator an original, but I can’t, because it reeked of cynicism and humanity, which a cliché portrait of Death in literature, movies and TV. I wish I could find some originality in the theme – the girl is saved from mortal danger by the words and books; and irony – the girl was put into this mortal danger because of the words and books, but I can’t once again, because this theme is as old as written word and probably even older.

I’m scrutinizing this book, because of countless rewards it got and because of innumerable fans that read and reread and cry over this book, so naturally my expectations were very high. I’m not trying to piss off this army of fans by saying that their beloved book was only ok to me and not very original, it just didn’t live up to my expectations. So the bottom line is – nothing to see, moving alone…

Top Ten Books I Want To Reread - Top Ten Tuesday #3

2011-09-27T08:00:00.070-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

Top Ten Books I Want To Reread.

I’m very rarely rereading books because of multiple reasons: first, I just simply do not have enough time to read all the books I want to read, not to mention to reread these that I already read; second, I have too good of a memory and it is usually boring for me to reread entire book, because I remember it down to each insignificant detail; and third, if and when I’m rereading a book that I really loved from the first time, I almost never have the same range of emotions that I had on my first read. Nevertheless, I still have a desire to reread some books. Here are ten of them in no particular order that have been on my mind lately.

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. I have read it only once and loved it dearly. However, I read it before I knew English good enough to attempt reading it in its original language, so I always wanted to reread it in English (I have a thing to read books, watch movies, etc without translation if possible). And as of late, I just simply wanted to reread it because it has been almost ten years since I read it first.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. This is one of my favorite books that I read in High School and I never reread it, because of the reasons I stated above. I have been thinking about it a lot in a pasted two-three months, maybe it is time to rerad it?
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. It’s only and at the same time already been a year, since I first read it. I didn’t seem to stop thinking about it. I’m not sure if I’m yet ready to read the whole book, but I would love to go through some moments that I especially liked.
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough. I read it when I was fourteen at summer camp. One girl brought this book with her, but wasn’t reading it. I never heard about this book before. However when I finished the only book that I brought (my mother couldn't believe that I will be spending time reading in the summer camp), I borrowed it from the girl, started reading and couldn’t stop until I finished. I returned the book to the girl, left camp and never saw neither girl, nor The Thorn Birds. I should get myself my own copy and reread it one day.
Angelique Series by Sergeanne Golon. I stopped reading romances when I was about fourteen. Somehow I outgrew and got bored with them. Once in a while I’m getting an urge to read a romance, but now I don’t know any authors. I don’t know who is bad and who is incredible. And I simply cannot pick anything, because everything sounds the same to me (no offence to romance readers). However for the cases when I need to read a romance, I have Angelique Series that I have been rereading since I was eleven. I never read further than seventh book (there is thirteen books in the series). In my opinion, the quality is seriously decreasing after sixth book.
Shopaholic Series by Sophie Kinsella. Sophie Kinsella is one of only two known to me authors (the second one is Oscar Wilde) that make me laugh until my stomach hurts. I’m thinking about rereading Shopaholic Series when I need a dose of silliness in my life.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll. This is one of my all time favorite books. I reread it countless times when I was a child, but I didn’t reread it once in past ten years. I need to revisit the Wonderland.
The Door into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein. This is my favorite Heinlein’s book and one of my favorite sci-fi books. It contains all things that I enjoy: love, betrayal, time travel, happy ending and the most adorable fictional cat.
Stainless Steel Rat Series, Deathworld Trilogy and pretty much anything by Harry Harrison. I love Harry Harrison and haven’t been reading any of his books for a long time.
Sword of Truth Series by Terry Goodkind. It is written at the level of your regular six-grader – terrible. Nonetheless, I like the story and recently I’ve wanted to read some epic fantasy.

Drawing the line, it looks like I’m tired of classics and literally fiction and I need some genre fiction on my reading list.

Great books that just isn’t all that great

2011-08-15T13:37:00.000-04:00

Great books that just aren't all that great

Over at Slate, deputy books editor Juliet Lapidos is asking writers, books critics and editors to tell her their least favorite books from the great, canonical books. I found it quite interesting read and it made me think how probably we all, same as Juliet Lapidos with Thomas Hardy novels, sometimes find ourselves lost and frustrated after reading or attempting to read one of the universally acknowledged great novels.

For me one of such books is Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. After finishing the book, I read countless critical essays, reviews and analysis and I still feel that either I’m missing something or this novel just wasn’t all that great. While reading Wuthering Heights, I really wished that its characters would be real, so I would be able personally physically hurt all of them.

For instance, my grandfather, almost the whole his life was trying to love Leo Tolstoy’s books. Sometime, when he was around sixty, he was attempting to reread War and Peace again to finally get a grip of its greatness. Instead, he ended up shutting up the book with laud bang and pronouncing that he always thought that Tolstoy’s works were dull and he will never loved it. Mind, my grandfather was a compulsive reader, not just your casual, five books a year, case. And even though I disagree with him about Tolstoy in particular (I happen to be one of these people who find his works truly great), I completely understand him, how sometimes, even if you will spend half of your life trying, you just cannot love or at least acknowledge the greatness of one of the canonical books.

On the other hand, I always believed, same as Elif Batuman (one of the writes that is answering Juliet Lapidos question in the article) that the right book has to reach you at the right time. My mother, as it seems was always obsessed with this idea, handing out books to me with a phrase: “You will enjoy this book, considering your current age and state of mind.” And I must say that she posses a particular talent in this area, because almost all books she gave me became my favorites. Unfortunately, we don’t always have such a great advisers who know us and literature good enough to make a right suggestion. We grow up and starting to choose books ourselves. Some turning out to be a great misses, sometimes so great, it leaves a scar that might not heal until the rest of our lives.

Some books are imposed on us, imposed at the wrong time and for all the wrong reasons. I’m talking about required reading in school. I have a number of books that were forced upon me at school that I still hate with all my might. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a good example. It was a required reading when I was in 10th grade. I was barely able to finish it, sick and tired of whiney Raskolnikov. After that experience, not only I loathed Crime and Punishment, I hated Dostoyevsky, even though I haven’t read any other his works. It took me sometime and only this year I found enough bravery in myself to try something else by Dostoyevsky. To my greatest astonishment I loved Idiot and Notes from Underground. However, I still feel not ready to give Crime and Punishment another try, so it still stays on my list of the great books that just isn’t that great.

Also, we have to keep in mind that we are all different. We have different interests, different life experience, we come from different cultural, social, financial and educational backgrounds, so it is a silly idea that every so-called great book should speak to every individual that reads it. We have our preferences in stories, writing styles and characters. For instance, Edgar Allen Poe’s writing is superb, in my opinion; however, his stories never really made much sense to me (The Fall of the House of Usher – honestly, why didn’t he let his beloved sister out the moment he realized that she was buried alive). Sometimes I might like the story (The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne), but not able to stand the writing style (how she talks to her daughter, frankly, I don’t think that anyone, in any century ever talked to children in such a pompous, overly dramatic, histrionic manner). Sometimes it is very hard for a reader to overcome prejudice and get out of the comfort zone, but it doesn’t mean that we should never try.

So, what is your list of great books that just aren't all that great?

The best 100 opening lines from books

2011-08-09T13:43:00.000-04:00

The best 100 opening lines from books by Stylist

• The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

• Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

• Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

• A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

• Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolfe “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”

• Back When We Were Grownups, Anne Tyler “Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.”

• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.”

• The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.”

• Moby-Dick, Herman Melville “Call me Ishmael.”

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."

• The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."

• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling “Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Mark Haddon “It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears' house. Its eyes were closed.”

• The Time Travellers Wife, Audrey Niffenegger “Clare: It’s hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he’s okay. It’s hard to be the one who stays.”

• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkein “When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventyifirst birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.”

• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."

• The Color Purple, Alice Walker “You better not never tell nobody but God.''

• Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”

• Bridget Jonses’ Diary, Helen Fielding "I will not drink more than fourteen alcohol units a week."

• A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolfe "But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction."
And the rest of it.

Top Ten Rebels in Literature - Top Ten Tuesday #2

2011-07-05T12:01:00.000-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

Top Ten Rebels in Literature (characters or authors) in no particular order:

• Romeo and Juliet from “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare were probably the fist lovers in the history of literature to rebel against their family and to follow their hearts.

• John Galt from “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand the character who led a revolt against leaches, people who do not create anything and what to live off creators such as John Galt himself, shaming them in the process

• Bilbo Baggins from “The Hobbit or There and Back Again” by J.R.R. Tolkien was the first hobbit ever to go on adventure, a rebel against the tradition of his people.

• D-503 from “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin involuntary rebel that quite accidently “have developed a soul.”

• Lisbeth Salander from “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson, the girl that shaked the whole Sweden, their bureaucrats and SAPO, fighting for her freedom and a chance to be herself.

• The Narrator from “Fight Club” by Chuck Palahniuk was a rebel against a desolate consumer society.

• Planet Pyrrus from “Deathworld” by Harry Harrison, the planet that revolts against its colonists.

• Peter Pan from “Peter Pan” by J.M. Barrie, the boy who refuse to grow up, a rebel against human nature.

• Holden Caulfield from “The Catcher in the Rye” by J. D. Salinger, a typical at least to me, but so carefully drawn by Salinger teen rebel against whole adult society.

• Betty Friedan with her “The Feminine Mystique” a rebel for the freedom of the half of human population. The person who described “the problem that has no name.” And a author of one of the most influential nonfiction books that started the second-wave feminism in the United States.

Top Ten Jerks in Literature - Top Ten Tuesday #1

2011-05-10T09:23:00.000-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

Top Ten Jerks in Literature.

1. Pretty much every male character in “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac. I expressed my views in the review and have nothing more to add to that.

2. Who isn’t a jerk, crazy or bastard in “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë? I personally couldn’t find anyone.

3. The whole Gregor Samsa’s family in “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka. I still remember my disgust how this so-called family treated Gregor.

4. Pretty much every god and goddess in “The Iliad” by Homer. The games they play and the wars they fight against each other (and for what reason? Who is the prettiest?), using all these innocent people, are disgusting. I just want to smack and shake them, yelling: “For crying out loud, you are gods and goddesses, so act appropriate to your position.” Or maybe they already act the way they supposed to…?

5. Baron Danglars, Fernand Mondego, Caderousse, Gerard de Villefort in “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas. I think I don’t have to explain anything about this group. What they’ve done and for what reasons… unforgivable and so Edmond Dantès thought.

6. Miles Gentry in “The Door into the Summer” by Robert A. Heinlein. The way he treated Dan Davis, his long time friend and for what reason, definitely deserves a jerk award.

7. Tom Fennel in “Theatre” by W. Somerset Maugham. The way he treated Julia… I’m only glad how he got played and that he got what he deserved at the end.

8. Philip Rearden in “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand.There are a lot of jerks in this book, but for some reason Philip bothers me the most. The way he treats Hank Rearden after what Hank is doing for Philip has a jerk written all over himself.

9. Henry Higgins in “Pygmalion” by George Bernard Shaw. I still can’t believe that in movie adaptation “My Fair Lady” Eliza Doolittle stays with Henry Higgins, because he is your classical jerk.

10. Eugene Onegin in “Eugene Onegin” by Alexander Pushkin. Even though by the end of the story he changes, it has no cancelation on how he was acting before.

The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan - Book Review #131

2011-04-19T16:23:00.001-04:00

The Cement Garden
by Ian McEwan

In this tour de force of psychological unease--now a major motion picture starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Sinead Cusack--McEwan excavates the ruins of childhood and uncovers uncovers things that most adults have spent a lifetime forgetting--or denying."Possesses the suspense and chilling impact of Lord of the Flies."-- Washington Post Book World.
From goodreads.com

The Cement Garden is a tiny novella that was advertised to me as the book that will rock my world. I have to report that, unfortunately, it didn’t.

The idea of what would happen if you leave children alone without any adult supervision, isn’t new and wasn’t a novelty neither in 1978, when it first was published. As synopsis mentions, one of the most notorious books on this theme is Lord of the Flies, which, in my opinion, gives a much more powerful and sweeping study of this issue.

Another reason why The Cement Garden didn’t make a big impression on me, probably, is the style of Ian McEwan writing. He doesn’t make the subject matter sounds controversial, disgusting or revelatory. He tells it in the matter of fact tone, leaving nothing behind the scene, neither making a bigger deal of something that doesn’t deserve it. This doesn’t sound like a worse approach to the novel writing and probably at some other time I would confess that I prefer this style. However, it didn’t work for me in case of The Cement Garden. My best guess is, the reason it happened, because I accepted this universe, presented to me by McEwan as a normal, usual for these characters and when a character is in his conventional environment, I have no feeling neither towards him, no to his situation. It is when character is leaving his conventional atmosphere, the reader starting root for him, getting worried about him or shocked by his actions and decisions. And McEwan writing style made it for me as The Cement Garden characters never left their conventional environment.

I would recommend this book for people who like reading something that created a big turmoil in the society because of its theme, because as far as I heard, The Cement Garden certainly did this. For all you others, interested in the idea, but not reading something only because the size of the scandal it created, I recommend Lord of the Flies – read it, love it, same as I did.

What kind of book are you?

2011-03-21T14:20:00.001-04:00

You Are a Hardcover Book

When it comes to reading, you tend to stick to old and modern classics. You are picky about what you read.

You probably anticipate certain books' releases, and you snatch them up the moment they're available.

You have been building a library of books that mean a lot to you. You carefully consider every book before deciding to add it to your collection.

You believe that if a book is worth reading, it's worth paying more to have it in hardcover.

Are You a Hardcover Book or a Paperback Book?

You Are Fantasy / Sci Fi

You have an amazing imagination, and in your mind, all things are possible.

You are open minded, and you find the future exciting. You crave novelty and progress.

Compared to most people, you are quirky and even a bit eccentric. You have some wacky ideas.

And while you may be a bit off the wall, there's no denying how insightful and creative you are.

What Kind of Book Are You?

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë - Book Review #130

2011-03-11T11:20:00.002-05:00

Jane Eyre

by Charlotte Brontë

Orphaned into the household of her Aunt Reed at Gateshead, subject to the cruel regime at Lowood charity school, Jane Eyre nonetheless emerges unbroken in spirit and integrity. She takes up the post of governess at Thornfield, falls in love with Mr. Rochester, and discovers the impediment to their lawful marriage in a story that transcends melodrama to portray a woman's passionate search for a wider and richer life than Victorian society traditionally allowed. With a heroine full of yearning, the dangerous secrets she encounters, and the choices she finally makes, Charlotte Bronte's innovative and enduring romantic novel continues to engage and provoke readers.
From goodreads.com

Jane Eyre isn’t just a classic; it is the book that inspired other classics, such as Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. It also inspired many other authors. William Makepeace Thackeray called it "the masterwork of great genius." Jane Eyre is proclaimed by thousands of readers the all time favorite. It is not just British classics. It is not only known to the western world. It is internationally famous.

I knew all these praises before I started reading Jane Eyre and regardless, I was certain I will hate it. Why? Oh, just a silly reason: my experience with no less praised and called the most romantic book ever, by Charlotte Brontë’s sister Emily Brontë - Wuthering Heights. Yes, I know that to judge a book of one family member by the book of another doesn’t make much sense, that’s why I called a silly reason.

I vaguely remembered the story of Jane Eyre from a movie adaptation that I saw some years ago, when I still was a child. The bits and pieces I remembered from the movie plus my prejudice against Brontë sisters combined in my head into something ugly. So imagine my surprise, when after initial fifty pages I was finally able to unclench my fingers of the book and realized that I’m actually loving it. I waited for the moment when I will start hating Jane Eyre through the entire book, but it never came. I loved it from the start to finish.

Don’t get me wrong, Jane Eyre isn’t by far my favorite character, no I always agreed with her decisions. However, everything she did, everything she felt, or was afraid of was very characteristic to her and completely logical. Her actions and feelings fitted her perfectly and even if I disagree with something, I understood her.

What I really liked about Jane Eyre as a book, was the writing style. It was uncommon for Victorian book to have a first-person viewpoint narrative. Charlotte Brontë choice of this point of view made the story of Jane Eyre sounds very personal. Through the entire book I had a feeling that I was reading someone’s diary. And even though this someone is long gone, I had a feeling I was reading this diary without permission, so to the curiosity the obscure feeling of guilt was added that made reading process even more interesting and exciting. Not all first-person viewpoint novel create such emotions in me, so I’m guessing, there should be something more to it, which, unfortunately, I can’t pin-point.

Verdict: it is a rare event, as my husband told me, but this time, I’m in agreement with the majority: Jane Eyre is a great book and I advise it to everyone who never read it.

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray - Book Review #129

2011-03-09T10:43:00.000-05:00

Vanity Fair

by William Makepeace Thackeray

Vanity Fair is a story of two heroines—one humble, the other a scheming social climber—who meet in boarding school and embark on markedly different lives. Amid the swirl of London's posh ballrooms and affairs of love and war, their fortunes rise and fall. Through it all, Thackeray lampoons the shallow values of his society, reserving the most pointed barbs for the upper crust. What results is a prescient look at the dogged pursuit of wealth and status—and the need for humility.
From goodreads.com

Long before television, long before TV sets, even long before electrification there was love and demand for soap operas; and so they existed. They existed in the form of serialized novels that were published in parts every month. Authors were paid by the word and in many cases didn’t know how or when they will finish a story. Vanity Fair, in my opinion, is a good example of such Victorian soap opera. At least the feeling of soap opera didn’t leave me for a moment while I was reading it.

It took me two weeks to read the first half of Vanity Fair and after that, three months to convince myself to finish it. Like a classic soap operas it had a lot of repetitions, not direct, but in a form of variations. Also, like soap operas it had too much of air time (words, pages) for not too much story. Vanity Fair is too wordy and not for its own good. In my opinion, the plot of the book can be easily fit into tree hundred pages and Thackeray wrote nine hundred.

However, there were some things that I liked about Vanity Fair. Becky Sharp was one of these. She was certainly a refreshing and unusual heroine (or should I say anti-heroine) for a Victorian novel. She distantly reminded me of Scarlett O’Hara. Same as Scarlett, Becky was ready for anything to get what she wanted. Such determination combined with smartness, never leaves me insensitive. There were some really funny moments in Vanity Fair, which was another thing I liked about it. One of the funny moments is when old Sir Pitt Crawley proposes to Becky, however she has to decline, because she is already secretly married to his younger son - Rawdon Crawley and how Becky regrets it, because if she would marry Sir Pitt Crawley she would have became a wife of baronet. It was also very funny how at the end Becky uses her son, that she never cared about to get to Amelia Sedley. And there were some other funny moments… However, I will stop at this, because it is not my intention to retell the whole Vanity Fair in here.

Unfortunately, despite the things that I liked about Vanity Fair, there was one thought that I kept coming back to while reading: “What a drag and when is it going to end?” I am usually not bored by novels written a century, two or more ago. I do not require action to be entertained. However, the lack of action and bunch of unnecessary information are two different things and Vanity Fair was full of the latest. I guess I’m one of the people that do not like neither televisionalized not novelized soap operas.

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens - Book Review # 128

2011-03-08T10:48:00.000-05:00

Oliver Twist

by Charles Dickens

The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken in by a den of thieves, shocked readers when it was first published. Dickens's tale of childhood innocence beset by evil depicts the dark criminal underworld of a London peopled by vivid and memorable characters—the arch-villain Fagin, the artful Dodger, the menacing Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. Combining elements of Gothic Romance, the Newgate Novel and popular melodrama, Dickens created an entirely new kind of fiction, scathing in its indictment of a cruel society, and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery.
From goodreads.com

I’ve being staying away from Charles Dickens, because I’ve always considered him to be a British version of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: brilliant, however impossible to read without wanting to kill all characters at first and yourself afterwards. I don’t know where I got this impression from. I don’t know what made me draw parallels between these two authors. Nonetheless, this notion was strong and inviolable.

I only read one Dickens before – A Christmas Carol. I loved it dearly and found no resemblances with Dostoyevsky’s works, which made me doubt my impression until I found out that A Christmas Carol wasn’t your typical Dickens. I was mingling with the idea of reading Dickens for a while and only about two weeks ago I decided that if I will not try him now, I should just cross him out of my under the radar authors list and be done with it. And so I cracked Oliver Twist open.

Oliver Twist was a serialized novel, first published monthly over period of time of two years. Dickens never planned his novels, so when the first part was published already, he had no idea how he will end it. He began Oliver Twist as a social satire; and even though I generally love satire endlessly, Dickens sardonic language was annoying me a great deal. It seemed to me farfetched, forced and somehow cartoonish.

However, as Dickens plans changed with Oliver Twist, so did his language. Closer to the middle of the novel, Dickens started to get attached to Oliver’s character. The story of Oliver Twist became personal for him, as he lived through something similar as a boy. At this point sarcastic language started to fade away and my affection started to grow. By the end of the novel, I admitted that my impression that Dickens resembled Dostoyevsky was completely incorrect.

If Dickens would have planned his novels he should have started Oliver Twist with something like “once upon a time in the land far far away”, because he certainly finished it in a manner of “and they lived happily ever after.” I do like a fairy tales sort of endings. However, in case of Oliver Twist the difference between the beginning and the end is so striking that such ending is utterly out of place. Nevertheless, I don’t consider it to be a Dickens’ fault, I rather think of it as a problem of Victorian tradition to serialize novels.

Overall, I enjoyed Oliver Twist. And to these of you, who have ever started it but couldn’t finish (I know there are lot of people like this), I advise to try sticking with the book until about the middle and I’m sure you will see this novel completely different after that.

Fantômas by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain - Book Review #127

2011-03-07T10:03:00.000-05:00

Fantômas

by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain

“One episode simply melts away as the next takes over”(The New York Times) in this deliciously sinister turn-of-the-century tale of a French evil genius run rampant. Three appalling crimes leave all of Paris aghast: the Marquise de Langruen is hacked to death, the Princess Sonia is robbed, and Lord Beltham is found dead, stuffed into a trunk. Inspector Juve knows that all the clues point to one suspect: the master of disguise, Fantômas. Juve cleverly pursues him in speeding trains, down dark alleys, through glittering Parisian salons, obsessed with bringing the demon mastermind to justice.
From goodreads.com

Until recently I had no idea that one of my childhood beloved movie trilogy Fantômas was based on once widely popular book series by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain with alarming number of installments – forty three. After finding it out I could not resist to check out at least the first installment – Fantômas.

I didn’t know much about book series, so I started reading it with impressions from movie trilogy: a light-headed, vaudeville-like story with clumsy, rushed inspector Juve, portrait by Louis de Funès and green-faced comical-like villain Fantômas, played by Jean Marais. And even though in the book inspector Juve turned out to be a smart and pedantic; and Fantômas felt not at all like a make-believe villain; I could not stop giggling and see the great Louis de Funès in Juve and equally great Jean Marais as Fantômas. So I didn’t really get to experience Fantômas as a serious crime fiction as it was meant to be.

It appears to me that Fantômas wasn’t meant to be a mystery, because the identity of Fantômas is easily recognizable at almost the very beginning of the story. Notwithstanding, it didn’t make the story less thrilling or interesting. It was still quite amusing to follow Fantômas’ crimes, notice his mistakes and imperfections that helped inspector Juve in his investigations. It was also quite engaging to follow inspector Juve’s line of inference.

Fantômas is probably one of the greatest French villains created in the twenties century. He is a master of disguise. He is ruthless, smart, with no moral code. He will not stop at anything, neither spare anyone to get what he is after. He uses the latest technology available at the beginning of the twenties century to aid in his crimes. He signal handedly put the police all around France in despair to solve the crimes he committed. He is unbeatable. Or is he really?

I will return to this series with great delight some times in the future, even though, I feel it is going to be quite a challenge to be able to get my hands on all the books from this series. Unfortunately, once widely popular, this series nowadays are hardly known to anyone.

Booking Through Thursday #3

2011-03-03T09:39:00.001-05:00

Booking Through Thursday asks:

Do you cheat and peek at the ends of books? (Come on, be honest.)

Ok, I will be honest. I used to do that all the time when I was a child. I used to read first chapter, than the last one and after that everything in between and not necessary in chronological order.

However, in a while I understood that the knowledge by itself that John is a killer, that Mary and Tom are together, that Jessica survived and Janet didn’t make it, that some safely returned home and some didn’t is not satisfactory to me. I don’t only want to know that John was a killer, I want to know how and why he killed, I want to know his motives and his thoughts, so basically I want to read the whole book and I want to know the whole story.

In a while, I understood that I’m robbing myself of the story and I’m not getting any gratification in the information received. So I stopped and I now I never peek at the ends of books. Yes, I have to admit that sometimes I’m tempted. However, I’m stopping myself, promising much greater satisfaction when I read the end at the end, as it was meant to be. And honestly, this is always the case for me.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley - Book Review #126

2011-03-02T10:24:00.001-05:00

Brave New World

by Aldous Huxley

"Community, Identity, Stability" is the motto of Aldous Huxley's utopian World State. Here everyone consumes daily grams of soma, to fight depression, babies are born in laboratories, and the most popular form of entertainment is a "Feelie," a movie that stimulates the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. Though there is no violence and everyone is provided for, Bernard Marx feels something is missing and senses his relationship with a young woman has the potential to be much more than the confines of their existence allow.
From goodreads.com

I started to read Brave New World with huge prejudice. After I read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, I read a lot of different things on the subject. One of these things was about the influence of We on 1984 by George Orwell; and how George Orwell suggested that We also influenced Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; and how Aldous Huxley denied it. It isn’t actually important if any of these things are true or not. It doesn’t actually matter if We had anything to do with Brave New World or not. Thousands of literally works were influenced by Shakespeare’s plays and it doesn’t make these works either bad or good by default. However, even understanding all of that, I still couldn’t get out of it and started to read Brave New World with huge prejudice and not a positive one. I’m not sure how much of this prejudice got into way of shaping my opinion on Brave New World. But hey, none of us can ever be completely objective; all of us have past and our own package that determines our way of thinking, our opinions and our decisions.

So with this explanatory preface, I’m coming out in the open finally: I did not like Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I know that almost like all the western world is totally and completely in love with this book. Unfortunately, I’m not one of these followers. I don’t even want to try to determine the cause of this dislike; I will only list what I didn’t like.

I pretty much didn’t like the whole book: it was boring, uneventful and awkwardly structured. I didn’t care for or liked any of characters with exception of Mustapha Mond - Resident World Controller of Western Europe. He was the only character worth mentioning, in my opinion. I didn’t find anything new or original in Brave New World; not ideas, not even a new perspective on old ideas. Maybe it is because this book itself became a classics and cliché for its greatness and now, eighty years after its first publication, nothing is new in it, because everything from it was reused and not once. However, even then, at the time of its first publication, it still wasn’t the first to present ideas in the way it did. Nevertheless, this is not important, because I promised not to analyze why I didn’t like one thing or another about this book. I also wasn’t very impressed with Aldous Huxley’s writing style: it was dry and uninvolved, with the small exception of conversation between the John the Savage and Mustapha Mond at the end.

I will stop at this point, bashing everyone’s favorite book to preserve my dignity and spare other people’s feelings. I’m not recommending this book for two very obvious, from my review, reasons: first, everyone is already reading and loving it; and the second, I didn’t like it, so why would I recommend it? From where I stand, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin deserve much more attention.

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen - Book Review #125

2011-03-01T10:51:00.000-05:00

Mansfield Park

by Jane Austen

Taken from the poverty of her parents' home, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with only her cousin Edmund as an ally. When Fanny's uncle is absent in Antigua, Mary Crawford and her brother Henry arrive in the neighborhood, bringing with them London glamour and a reckless taste for flirtation. As her female cousins vie for Henry's attention, and even Edmund falls for Mary's dazzling charms, only Fanny remains doubtful about the Crawford's influence and finds herself more isolated than ever. A subtle examination of social position and moral integrity, Mansfield Park is one of Jane Austen's most profound works.
From goodreads.com

Mansfield Park is my third Jane Austen, after Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice; and I still have quite unsettled opinion on her works. My opinion varies on her books from love to hate and everything in between depending on time of the day, my mood and whatever particular scene from any of these three books I’m thinking about.

I heard that many people particularly dislike and consider Mansfield Park one of the worst Jane Austen’s books. As far as I understood, this negative opinion mostly formed on disfavor towards main character – Fanny Price. I would have to disagree with that opinion. I could probably see why Fanny is a character that most of the people wouldn’t like. Most of the reviewers call her boring. I could see where this is coming from. Fanny is not your regular lovable, strong rebellion that openly fights against something she disagrees with. She is not the character that trying to break old conservatives, senseless regulations. She is shy, tranquil and timid. She settles with her situation; she settles with bulling from her aunt and most of her cousins. However, in this settlement for conservative and “boring” way of living, if you like, Fanny actually fights against open frivolities of her cousins and Crawfords. Fanny is definitely not a part of glamorous, corrupt and “fun or interesting”, if you like, society. Her shyness, weakness and the fact that she finally made to oppose the society she disagrees with, make her even more interesting and courageous character. This small, mousy looking, unimportant girl is ready to go against her family, her benefactors, risk everything she have, because she knows she is right, because she is the only one who wasn’t blinded by glitter of corruption. So despite the popular opinion, I really did like Fanny as a character.

We have all been more or less to blame ... every one of us, excepting Fanny

I like Jane Austen stories. I like her characters. I like her wit. Her writing style is something that I’m not a big fan of. I understand that Austen didn’t have many examples to work with and her Sense and Sensibility novel considered by some as the first English modern novel. However, still, even considering all above, I cannot love Austen prose. It seems somehow very isolated and reductive. There is no influence on the story from outside. It seems to be closed in one manor that has no connections with outside world’s politics or economics. Austin’s works are not something that can be called atmospheric. There are also not many descriptions of characters, settings or attires. The scenes from middle section in Mansfield Park were dragging and unnecessary starched out. At the same time, the ending was rushed and crumpled.

Overall, I would say that I liked Mansfield Park more than I disliked it. As it seems to be a case for Austen’s works, it was a nice story with the happy ending, where everyone gets precisely what they deserve.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess - Book Review #124

2011-02-28T11:17:00.004-05:00

A Clockwork Orange

by Anthony Burgess

A vicious fifteen-year-old "droog" is the central character of this 1963 classic, whose stark terror was captured in Stanley Kubrick's magnificent film of the same title. In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. When the state undertakes to reform Alex—to "redeem" him—the novel asks, "At what cost?" This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition and Burgess's introduction "A Clockwork Orange Resucked."
From goodreads.com

My way towards A Clockwork Orange was quite a journey by itself. I knew about this book and wanted to read it for years; and I wanted to read it in its original language – English, because I prefer to read books without translations, if possible. However there were two obstacles that were stopping me: first, I kept hearing about some intense slang; and second, English isn’t my first language. So I kept thinking that if even native speakers find A Clockwork Orange a difficult book to read, how impossible it would be for me. And I kept postponing this book, till the time I would feel that I know English good enough to try reading it, until recently.

My thoughts once more came back to A Clockwork Orange and I started to read a bit more attentively about it. And what did I read in the synopsis itself on goodreads.com? – “Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang” Invented! This one word gave me a hope. If the slang used in A Clockwork Orange is invented, than I’m at the same position as native speakers. If that slang is invented than no one actually knows it, except these who read the book and the inventor himself – Anthony Burgess. To settle on my decision to finally read it, I went on and skim through some reviews and found out a very good advice – to look up A Clockwork Orange glossary, print it and have it alongside while reading the book. I followed the advice an upon opening the glossary I went on reading the first column only, not paying any attention to the second and the third. On the second word I got a feeling of something familiar, but didn’t pay any attention to that. After fourth and fifth word I stopped reading and stared on the list, my eyes slid to the second column and my suspicion got proofed; my eyes slid to the third column of the glossary and everything finally became clear – the third column said: “origins: Russian”. I looked though the third column and 99% on the “invented” language had Russian origins. Yes, it was spelled using Latin alphabet; yes, it was shorten sometimes the way Russians would never shorten it; yes, it was broken, but nevertheless it was Russian. “Invented slang!” I thought and laughed. “Invented language!” I kept laughing. “Anthony Burgess created the whole new language to write this book! And I’ve been putting away this book because of this ”invented” language that I happens to be native speaker of! ” And after that without any hesitation I cracked the cover of A Clockwork Orange open.

My way through A Clockwork Orange turned out to be quite a journey as well. Even though now I was convinced that I know both English and the invented slang, I never realized how still confusing it would be to read a book written on two languages simultaneously, when these two languages are mixed up in the same sentence. However, after initial ten – twenty pages I almost got used even to this.

Despite all linguistic difficulties, I enjoyed A Clockwork Orange very mush. Anthony Burgess managed to create one of the rare and paradoxical main characters that regardless of being an anti-hero still utterly lovable. Not being very wordy, Anthony Burgess pulled off fully fleshed, believable characters and perceptive world.

The ideas Anthony Burgess explored in A Clockwork Orange of freedom, importance of free will, good and evil, what becomes to the person when evil can no longer be part oneself, still ring true and still can be considered as unresolved, open questions. Burgess arguments his point of view very clearly and earnestly; and I do agree with his point of view

I read the edition that contained the last, “controversial”, as it called in the synopsis, chapter. Honestly, I didn’t find anything controversial in the chapter itself. The only controversy I see that it was never printed in the US. I also read Burgess's introduction and I completely agree with him that without the last chapter the story would be no longer a novel, but a fable. It would not contain the growth and development of the character, not to mention, it would leave some plot lines hang in the air (Pete’s story). I would not discuss here why US publisher decided to leave the last chapter out. I would not discuss if it was a good idea or not. I will just say: “I viddyed the whole veshch and that was horrorshow, my droogs.”

I would recommend this book to each and every person. A Clockwork Orange is a true classic that everyone should read. So...

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Book Review #123

2011-02-25T10:05:00.000-05:00

Notes from Underground

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A predecessor to such monumental works such as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Notes From Underground represents a turning point in Dostoyevsky's writing towards the more political side. In this work we follow the unnamed narrator of the story, who disillusioned by the oppression and corruption of the society in which he lives withdraws from that society into the underground. A dark and politically charged novel, Notes From Underground shows Dostoyevsky at his best.
From goodreads.com

Notes from Underground is a very short, but a very attention demanding book. If you just skim it, you will be left with nothing. However, if you give it a time and try to digest it properly, thinking it through, you will be left with hundred of very important questions (Dostoyevsky will not give you any answers) and a horrible recognition of yourself in the main character. I believe that everyone can find something or probably everything to relate to the Underground man, though not everyone would admit it even to themselves.

Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away.
That is, one can even say that the more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind.

I guess I’m only able to admit it here, under the disguise of the digital world. Though, if I’m admitting it, am I already not like the main character? Questions.

Questions… Does emotional stability more important than level of IQ? If the Underground man wouldn’t be in such poverty, would it give him a piece of mind? Would he have a better chance of emotional peace in the twenty first century in civilized country with Prozac and shrink’s help available?

Dostoyevsky drew a full, realistic picture of a Superfluous Man. How many are there people like that? Aren’t we all feel or actually are sometimes Superfluous Men? Questions.

Questions… And one of the most important questions is – should we even bother to ask these questions to ourselves? Because as Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky said:

What's better – cheap happiness or lofty suffering? Well, tell me – which of the two is better?

End of the Year Wrap-up 2010

2010-12-30T11:33:00.001-05:00

2010 is almost over, so I decided to take this opportunity to post a mere statistics on what happened to me on a reading front during this year. In total, I read 148 books in 2010, about 50000 pages (sounds insane, isn’t it?). I never before scrupulously tracked all the books that I read for the whole year, but I believe that I usually read around 100 books a year, so it seems like I did great in 2010. My least read in month (if calculating number of titles), turned out to be January 2010 - I only read three books. The reason, as I see it, was houseguests that we had during January and the enormousness of Under the Dome by Stephen King. The most read in months turned out to be June and August, both tight at 16 titles. Out of the 148 books read there were eight rereads, all other I read for the first time, or at least I believe so (I'm not a big fan to reread books, as you can see).

Some books I read in 2010 made a huge impression on me and they would stay with me for the rest of my life; others were terrible beyond any reason. However, in general, I’m very satisfied with 2010 readings.

I didn’t write reviews on all the books that I read I 2010, even though it was my desire. I hope to do better next year, but can’t promise anything …

I didn’t join any challenges in 2010 and I’m not planning to do so in 2011. For me to join any challenge is to make plans; and to make plans is to restrict yourself. I’m not a big plan maker, I’m a person of mood. Because of this I could not make any prediction on 2011, I could not even be sure that this blog will still exists by the end of 2011. To my astonishing surprise it survived almost a year. This might be a good sign or not... Who knows?

Happy New Year everyone! I wish you a year of pleasant, but completely unexpected surprises. I certainly hope that my 2011 will be like that.

January 2010

1. Julie & Julia by Julie Powell
2. My life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme
3. Under the Dome by Stephen King

February 2010

1. City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare
2. Blue is for Nightmares by Laurie Faria Stolarz
3. White is for Magic by Laurie Faria Stolarz
4. Silver is for Secrets by Laurie Faria Stolarz
5. Red is for Remembrance by Laurie Faria Stolarz
6. Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
7. Cracked up to be by Courtney Summers
8. Fallen by Lauren Kate
9. Lonely Hearts Club by Elizabeth Eulberg
10. Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
11. Heist Society by Ally Carter
12. Wake by Lisa McMann
13. Fade by Lisa McMann

March 2010

1. The Only Wiccan Spell Book You’ll Ever Need by Marian Singer
2. Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey
3. The Secret Year by Jennifer Hubbard
4. Book of Shadows (Sweep 1) by Cate Tiernan
5. The Coven (Sweep 2) by Cate Tiernan
6. Blood Witch (Sweep 3) by Cate Tiernan
7. Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins
8. Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey
9. Incarceron (Incarceron, #1)by Catherine Fisher
10. Dark Magick (Sweep 4) by Cate Tiernan
11. Numbers by Rachel Ward
12. Awakening (Sweep 5) by Cate Tiernan
13. Envy (Luxe Series #3) by Anna Godbersen
14. City of Glass by Cassandra Clare
15. Spellbound (Sweep 6) by Cate Tiernan

April 2010

1. Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
2. My Soul to Lose (Soul Screamers, #0) by Rachel Vincent
3. My Soul to Take (Soul Screamers, #1) by Rachel Vincent
4. Sapphique (Incarceron, #2)by Catherine Fisher
5. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
6. Splendor (Luxe Series #4) by Anna Godbersen
7. Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
8. Princess for Hire by Lindsey Leavitt
9. Love You Hate You Miss You by Elizabeth Scott
10. A Match Made in High School by Kristin Walker
11. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
12. Geek High (Geek High, #1) by Piper Banks
13. All Unquiet Things by Anna Jarzab

May 2010

1. Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover (Gallagher Girls, #3) by Ally Carter
2. Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
3. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
4. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
5. The Thirteen Treasures by Michelle Harrison
6. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
7. Brightly Woven by Alexandra Bracken
8. Once a Witch by Carolyn MacCullough
9. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
10. Jekel Loves Hyde by Beth Fantaskey
11. Inkheart (Inkheart, #1) by Cornelia Funke
12. King Solomon's Mines by Henry Rider Haggard
13. Stardust by Neil Gaiman
14. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

June 2010

1. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
2. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
3. The Cinderella Society by Kay Cassidy
4. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
5. The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter by Yasunari Kawabata
6. Boys, Bears, and a Serious Pair of Hiking Boots by Abby McDonald
7. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
8. Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris
9. The Karma Club by Jessica Brody
10. By The Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead by Julie Anne Peters
11. Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos
12. Catching Fire (Hunger Games, #2) by Suzanne Collins
13. Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
14. Club Dead by Charlaine Harris
15. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
16. If I Stay by Gayle Forman

July 2010

1. Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris
2. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
3. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
4. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
5. Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice
6. Geek Abroad by Piper Banks
7. Ivanhoe by Walter Scott
8. The Island of Dr Moreau by H. G. Wells
9. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
10. White Cat by Holly Black
11. The Awakening by Kate Chopin

August 2010

1. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
2. Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris
3. The Summer of Skinny Dipping by Amanda Howells
4. Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Faria Stolarz
5. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
6. The Gardener by S. A. Bodeen
7. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
8. The Christopher Killer by Alane Ferguson
9. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
10. Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris
11. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
12. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
13. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
14. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
15. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
16. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

September 2010

1. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
2. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
3. Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare
4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. The DUFF (Designated Ugly Fat Friend)by Kody Keplinger
6. Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters by Natalie Standiford
7. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
8. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
9. The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe
10. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
11. The Candidates (Delcroix Academy)by Inara Scott
12. Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers

October 2010

1. Birthmarked by Caragh M. O'Brien
2. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
3. Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
4. The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan
5. The Shining by Stephen King
6. Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel
7. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
8. A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift
9. Nevermore by Kelly Creagh
10. Mini Shopaholic (Shopaholic #6) by Sophie Kinsella
11. Paranormalcy by Kiersten White
12. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind
13. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
14. All Together Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #7) by Charlaine Harris

November 2010

1. Moscow to the End of the Line by Venedikt Erofeev
2. Chess Story by Stefan Zweig
3. The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez
4. The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff
5. The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
6. Linger (The Wolves of Mercy Falls #2) by Maggie Stiefvater
7. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
8. From Dead to Worse (Sookie Stackhouse #8) by Charlaine Harris
9. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Millennium #3) by Stieg Larsson, Reg Keeland
10. Mostly Good Girls by Leila Sales
11. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
12. Crescendo (Hush, Hush #2) by Becca Fitzpatrick
13. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
14. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter #1) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré (Illustrator)
15. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter #2) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré (Illustrator)

December 2010

1. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter #3) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré (Illustrator)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter #3) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré (Illustrator)
3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter #5) J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré (Illustrator)
4. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter #6) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré (Illustrator)
5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter #7) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré (Illustrator)
6. Animal Farm by George Orwell

Book Blogger Holiday Swap - Gifts

2010-12-17T15:29:00.000-05:00

Today is a good day and I’ll tell you why. I received my first Christmas gift of the year. This was not just a gift, but the gift from Book Blogger Holiday Swap Secret Santa. I barely could contain myself not to tear the box. I couldn’t lose even a second to look for my box knife or take off my jacket and shoes, so I opened the box within an instance, using a kitchen knife. Immediately my house was full of Christmas aroma - ginger and apples; and I could swear that this fragrance made me hear Christmas bells and snow falling outside my window (even though it is 76 degrees outside).

The box contained three beautiful books:

In addition, there were a bar of handmade spicy apple and peaches soap and a box of Snappy Ginger and Herb Tea.

Thank you Secret Santa for all your beautiful gifts and Happy Holidays to you too.

I also would like to express my gratitude to the Book Blogger Holiday Swap's hosts - great job guys and Happy Holidays!

Quote of the Day

2010-12-10T08:52:00.000-05:00

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

Jessamyn West

Quote of the Day

2010-12-09T13:12:00.000-05:00

Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.

Arnold Lobel

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle - Book Review #122

2010-12-09T10:56:00.001-05:00

A Wrinkle in Time

by Madeleine L'Engle

Everyone in town thinks Meg is volatile and dull-witted and that her younger brother Charles Wallace is dumb. People are also saying that their father has run off and left their brilliant scientist mother. Spurred on by these rumors, Meg and Charles Wallace, along with their new friend Calvin, embark on a perilous quest through space to find their father. In doing so they must travel behind the shadow of an evil power that is darkening the cosmos, one planet at a time.
From goodreads.com

As I mentioned not once in my reviews, I didn’t grow up in the USA. So not once I came across books that are widely popular in the USA, but completely unknown to me. It is either these books were never translated to Russian for some reasons, or if they were, they weren’t very popular in Russia because of cultural or some other aspects. A Wrinkle in Time is one of these books that I never heard of when I was in Russia and I kept hearing pretty much from everyone in the USA. So I just had to check it out what all these people are talking about. I just had to read the book that considered by many as their most favorite childhood story. I just had to read the book that got so many praises and awards; and even though it was published some forty years ago, it is still being read and loved by every next generation as much as by previous one.

My brief research showed that A Wrinkle in Time was never translated in Russian, at least not until quite recently. After reading this book, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t too surprised. It seemed to me that Madeleine L'Engle was a Christian writer. Of course, I’m only judging by one book and it might not be a case for her other novels. However, A Wrinkle in Time most definitely was written from a Christian point of view with a lot of references to “God”. That fact alone would have banned this book from USSR instantaneously. On top of it, A Wrinkle in Time was written during the Cold War times and as far as I know, books that were written at that time and especially by American writers weren’t even considered to be translated in Russian.

A Wrinkle in Time is a children’s book, so for adults that never read it before it probably will seem as sweet, cute and silly. I always believed that for a person to truly love a children’s book, it needs to be read first in the childhood. Otherwise, a person can learn to appreciate a children’s book, consider it to be a great book, but never truly love it.

Either it is for that reason, or maybe because of the cultural differences (Christian theme annoyed me quite a bit), but I can’t say that I love this book or that I will ever want to reread it on my own account. However, it doesn’t mean that I think it was a bad book. It is indeed a very good book for seven-twelve years old children. Madeleine L'Engle doesn’t talk down to the reader, like a lot of children’s books writers do. It is a compelling story that includes some interesting scientific theories, which explained quite well; fascinating adventures; thrilling danger; a fight against evil forces and it has very good meanings underneath it all – love, friendship and family. Even though these meanings are presented under Christian sauce, it doesn’t make these meanings less valuable or less universal. Plus Madeleine L'Engle doesn’t shove it into a reader’s throat, she doesn’t lecture a reader on this either, however it is still there and visible.

I would recommend this book for every child of age group seven to twelve and I would also recommend to every parent to advise this book to their children. I’m sure that in A Wrinkle in Time children will find a friend for life.

Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick - Book Review #121

2010-12-08T09:57:00.000-05:00

Crescendo (Hush, Hush #2)

by Becca Fitzpatrick

Nora Grey's life is still far from perfect. Surviving an attempt on her life wasn’t pleasant, but at least she got a guardian angel out of it. But Patch has been acting anything but angelic lately. He’s more elusive than ever and, even worse, he’s started spending time with Nora’s arch-enemy, Marcie Millar.

Nora would have hardly noticed Scott Parnell, an old family friend who’s moved back to town, if Patch hadn’t been acting so distant. Even with Scott’s totally infuriating attitude Nora finds herself drawn to him – despite her lingering feeling that he’s hiding something.

Haunted by images of her murdered father, and questioning whether her Nephilim bloodlines has anything to do with his death, Nora puts herself increasingly dangerous situations as she searches for answers. But some things are better left buried, because the truth could destroy everything – and everyone – she trusts.
From goodreads.com

I read Hush, Hush – the first installment of Hush, Hush series about a year ago, when it was released. By the time I opened Crescendo – the second novel in the Hush, Hush series, I couldn’t remember anything about Hush, Hush except that I read it in one sitting, it was about fallen angels and I seemed to enjoy it. The fact that I didn’t remember any of the plot from the first book, made the beginning of the second novel sort of confusing for me. So I put away Crescendo and read prologue and the last chapter of Hush, Hush, which gave me at least the vague idea of the plot. And I set off reading Crescendo, thinking that details will come to me.

Either I significantly grew up in this year since I read Hush, Hush, or I just blocked out all details of the first book, because it wasn’t good and in a while assumed that I liked it, or maybe the second book – Crescendo was just… hmm… not as good as the first book. I’m really not sure what is the reason and, to be honest after Crescendo, I don’t really want to reread Hush, Hush to be able to form my opinion based on the facts and not on the vague ideas, but Crescendo read like a very bad fanfiction.

Nora – the main character – was completely unstable, to put it mildly. Her actions and reactions were so bizarre that I couldn’t even blame it on her being a teenager. The only base I could came up with for her behavior was that she is probably very disturbed at least. The scene when Nora and her friend Vee park the car in the tow away zone and later found their car with a stopper on the wheel, what did Nora decide to do? She decided to steal her ex-boyfriend’s car, parked nearby, because she didn’t want to talk to him, asking for a ride, she didn’t want to walk home, and she didn’t have anyone else to call to pick her up. So certainly the car stealing is the only reasonable way to go in this situation (this is sarcasm, for these that aren’t sure).

Crescendo was a string of idiotic decisions and absurd reactions. The whole mystery of the book was built on unreasonable lack of communication: Nora didn’t want to ask Patch anything, because… well because if she would, there wouldn’t be a story; and Patch didn’t tell anything tot Nora, because… well, for the same reason. And in my opinion, plots that are based on things like that are so weak, they don’t even deserve to be called plots at all.

It’s been almost two weeks since I read Crescendo and already details start to fade from my memory. I guess my brain just not capable of holding on to such nonsensical events. Well, at least in case of this book, unlike Hush, Hush, I would have a recording of my opinion on it in the form of this blog post, so I later on I won’t be able to delude myself that I actually liked the book.

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut - Book Review #120

2010-12-01T11:17:00.001-05:00

Cat's Cradle

by Kurt Vonnegut

Cat's Cradle, one of Vonnegut's most entertaining novels, is filled with scientists and G-men and even ordinary folks caught up in the game. These assorted characters chase each other around in search of the world's most important and dangerous substance, a new form of ice that freezes at room temperature. At one time, this novel could probably be found on the bookshelf of every college kid in America; it's still a fabulous read and a great place to start if you're young enough to have missed the first Vonnegut craze.
From goodreads.com

I’m definitely too young to be able to catch the first Vonnegut craze. Plus I didn’t grow up in the USA. So I have never read any Kurt Vonnegut’s books before. I heard a lot about him. We even had him in the Foreign Literature class, however I was fifteen and too busy with my social life to pay any attention to Vonnegut or his books. So here I’m, after reading him for the first time. And what did I think?

There are two major themes in Cat's Cradle, in my opinion: first, science and its great inventions in the hands of irresponsible idiots; and second, religion as panacea. In Vonnegut’s version the end of the world will not come because of the madman, pressing big red button. No, the end of the world will happen because of the careless people (in this case, children of one of the great scientists, who invented an atomic bomb) who came across the substance – Ice-nine – that they should never be allowed within a mile and in the pursuit of their own happiness they distribute the substance across the world. Angela gives it away to the American government in exchange of handsome husband. Newt gives it to the USSR for a fling with Russian ballet dancer. And Franklin gives it to "Papa" Monzano, a dictator of the small island country, for an exchange for position of Major General. So now the deadly dangerous substance is in the hands of two "Super power" countries and one madman.

Another theme is a religion – Bokononism. Vonnegut created one of the best, one of the most thought -through fictional religion that I have ever come through in the books. This is a religion that based on lies, create lies and not afraid to admit it. Bokononism presented in Cat's Cradle as panacea, as something that makes the life worthwhile, as lies that gives purpose of life.

In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in his cosmic loneliness.
And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done." And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat, looked around, and spoke. "What is the purpose of all this?" he asked politely.
"Everything must have a purpose?" asked God.
"Certainly," said man.
"Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this," said God.
And He went away.

Cat's Cradle was written in 1963 – in the middle of the Cold War and just after the Caribbean Crisis (The Cuban Missile Crisis). The thought about the end of the world was very hot at that moment. It is still relevant in our time. However as far as I understand, people are no longer as scared shitless as they used to be of the “end of the world” idea. Maybe, in our days, we don’t need black humor and satire to talk about the end of the world, but I’m sure that in 1963 this was only possible way to discuss it without putting people into deep depression for the rest of their lives.

While reading Cat's Cradle, I could definitely see Vonnegut’s genius and satire that I heard so much about. And I could definitely appreciate what themes he is bringing up and how he does it. Unfortunately, Cat's Cradle didn’t touch me deeply, so I would either fall utterly in love with it or hate it mercifully. Maybe the problem is that I’m not from the Cold War generation. Maybe I’m stone-hearted and thick-skinned. Or maybe I just don’t care much about the whole world. Despite that, I’m still glad I read Cat's Cradle and I will be surely reading more of Kurt Vonnegut, if not for love or hate than for educational purposes.

Mostly Good Girls by Leila Sales - Book Review #119

2010-11-30T09:31:00.001-05:00

Mostly Good Girls

by Leila Sales

The higher you aim, the farther you fall….

It’s Violet’s junior year at the Westfield School. She thought she’d be focusing on getting straight As, editing the lit mag, and figuring out how to talk to boys without choking on her own saliva. Instead, she’s just trying to hold it together in the face of cutthroat academics, her crush’s new girlfriend, and the sense that things are going irreversibly wrong with her best friend, Katie.

When Katie starts making choices that Violet can’t even begin to fathom, Violet has no idea how to set things right between them. Westfield girls are trained for success—but how can Violet keep her junior year from being one huge, epic failure?
From goodreads.com

With Mostly Good Girls I got precisely what I expected, which is always a good thing for me. Mostly Good Girls was a light, humorous, fast read, with no complicated issues. This is a chick lit for YA.

Mostly Good Girls is a very fast read. One moment I was cracking the cover open and the next thing I knew – I was on the last page. It is not only because this book falls into the short side, it was also quite compelling for me, and the writing was light and unobtrusive.

Even though Mostly Good Girls didn’t have a strong plot line (or should I say – didn’t have much of the plot at all: it was more of the line of events only tightened up together by same characters), it was full of light humor, not satire or irony. For me, Mostly Good Girls read like a book of comical scathes. It was so ludicrous sometimes that it almost reminded of a farce, full of improbable situations.

Unfortunately, characters were mostly plain and full of clichés. Because of an inexistent plot, characters didn’t move forward, neither went though some serious changes during the course of the novel. Even though, Violet – the main character, not once voiced out her goals, I didn’t really notice her moving eagerly toward them. Nevertheless, this doesn’t spoil the novel much, making it what it meant to be – a brief, uncomplicated fling.

I would recommend this book to any female in pretty much any age group, who is looking for quick mood boost and stress relieve that requires no mental work.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson - Book Review #118

2010-11-29T14:34:00.003-05:00

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Millennium #3)

by Stieg Larsson, Reg Keeland (Translator)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1) review.
The Girl Who Played with Fire (Millennium #2) review.

Lisbeth Salander—the heart of Larsson’s two previous novels—lies in critical condition, a bullet wound to her head, in the intensive care unit of a Swedish city hospital. She’s fighting for her life in more ways than one: if and when she recovers, she’ll be taken back to Stockholm to stand trial for three murders. With the help of her friend, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, she will not only have to prove her innocence, but also identify and denounce those in authority who have allowed the vulnerable, like herself, to suffer abuse and violence. And, on her own, she will plot revenge—against the man who tried to kill her, and the corrupt government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life.

Once upon a time, she was a victim. Now Salander is fighting back.
From goodreads.com

I’m very glad that my husband talked me into reading Millennium series. As I wrote in my review for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I wasn’t even planning to look twice on this series, mostly because of the first book’s synopsis, until my husband read these books.

Even though, I enjoyed The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest very much, I still had same issues with the third book as I did with the first two. It started slow for me and for the first fifty or so pages I actually had to push myself to read it. At some points of the novel, Larsson’s past as a journalist and non-fiction writer was easily recognized and this is one of the first times he was trying himself in fiction writing. By the third book, I got used to Swedish first, last, cities and streets names and it made the process of reading a lot easier than previous books. However, I’m still not able to pronounce at least half of the names, so my talking about these books resembles a gibberish puzzle (constantly using instead of proper names “this” and “that”).

I was a bit disappointed that Salander spent the most part of the book in the hospital and was mostly unable to use her extraordinary talents. Synopsis of the third book promised us that Now Salander is fighting back. Unfortunately, it seems like most of the fighting was done by Blomkvist and Säpo. So I didn’t get enough of Salander, the girl who has become one of my favorite fiction characters.

I still consider the first book in the trilogy to be my favorite one, nevertheless, the third book come very close and almost made a tie. Some parts of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest made me do a surprised “Whoa!” – as an example, the scene with Zalachenko’s “departure”. I absolutely adored dynamics of the questioning in the courtroom scene– superb writing that created a very powerful motion.

In each of three books, Larsson began new part with interesting information. In the first book, it was statistical information. In the second book, it was mathematical definitions. And in the third book, Larsson supplied reader with historical facts on the subject of female solders throughout the centuries. I really enjoyed this special touch of the books.

Overall, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest was a satisfying ending of the delightful series. It got very close to the fairy-tale ending with a huge pink bow on top of it, where everyone got precisely what they deserved. However, I still got a feeling that Larsson might have being leaving some loose ends for the possible sequel. Unfortunately, Stieg Larsson is dead. At the end of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the realization that I was about to finish reading the last Larsson’s book made me very sad.

Millennium series is a serenade to women, their powers and abilities, their place in society. This is a declaration against violence and discriminations towards women. I’m still scratching my head why in the USA Millennium series were promoted as men’s books. So first of all, I recommend this series to all women and only after that to men who are not afraid of strong women.

P.S. The great parody on Millennium series from The New Yorker.

From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris - Book Review #117

2010-11-19T09:55:00.000-05:00

From Dead to Worse (Sookie Stackhouse #8)

by Charlaine Harris

The supernatural community in Bon Temps, Louisiana, is reeling from two hard blows - the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the man-made horror of the explosion at the vampire summit the month before in the up-north city of Rhodes. Sookie Stackhouse is safe but dazed, yearning for things to get back to normal. But that's just not happening. Too many vampires - some friends, some not - were killed or injured, and her weretiger boyfriend, Quinn, is among the missing.

It's clear that things are changing, whether the Weres and vamps of her corner of Louisiana like it or not. And Sookie - friend of the pack and blood-bonded to Eric Northman, the leader of the local vampire community - is caught up in the changes.

In the ensuing battles, Sookie faces danger, death... and, once more, betrayal by someone she loves. And when the fur has finished flying and the cold blood flowing, her world will be forever altered.
From goodreads.com

From Dead to Worse is the eighth installment in the Sookie Stackhouse series and so far this is my favorite one. Sookie is on the roll. Her life is full of events, as never before: she has to deal with newly discovered family members; she has to keep her obligation to her brother; she has to deal with weres and vampires; don’t forget to throw witches in the pot. I don’t know how the supernatural world would survive without Sookie. And on top of this she has to protect herself from attempts on her life; and still sow up and do her job as a cocktail waitress. However, no love life for our Sookie, I hope she will catch up on this department in future books.

I love this book despite the fact (or maybe because of) it can’t be really called a novel. It doesn’t have one distinct plot line. It consists of multiple short stories put together. So the eighth book doesn’t have a gradational build up for the climax and it doesn’t have one big problem and its resolution at the end. However, it worked wonderfully for me. A lot of loose ends that have been left from previous seven books were tightened in.

I think this was the first time since the beginning of the series, when Sookie is portrait as a truly strong character. It seems like our Sookie is not longer just not-too-smart, wildly smiling cocktail waitress with a bad wardrobe who is ready to jump into any danger without as much as a thought. In this book, she actually made some smart and well thought through decisions. I only hope it will stick on her.

What else can I add what I haven’t said already in my previous seven reviews. It seems like I really like Sookie series and it is not just a fling. This series is here to stay in my life and I’m off to get the next book - Dead and Gone.

P.S. Why did they have to change the size of the book in the middle of the series? The eighth book is couple of inches taller and wider. Now it doesn’t look too good on my shelf with previous Sookie books.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac - Book Review #116

2010-11-17T10:28:00.001-05:00

On the Road

by Jack Kerouac

On September 5, 1957, Viking published Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road. Few books have had as profound an impact on American culture. Pulsating with rhythms of late 1940s/1950s underground America, jazz, sex, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "Beat" and has inspired generations of writers, musicians, artists, poets and seekers who cite their discovery of the book as the event "set them free."

Based on Kerouac's adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose four cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naïveté and wild abandon, and imbued with Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope, a book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up.
From goodreads.com

Freedom, open road, the wind on your face, hair flying back, new cities, new people, new experiences, new adventures – sounds good, right? Three wives left penniless, countless children scattered all over the US, grown man running to his elder aunt for another fifty bucks over and over again, destroyed lives, broken hearts and all for kicks – sounds not too good.

I have a mixed feeling about this book. Somehow I’m certain that I would love On the Road if I would have read it when I was sixteen and so, I would have stayed devoted to it though all my live. But I haven’t read it at sixteen, I read it some years later and now I couldn’t help but notice more than just a freedom of the road; I couldn’t help but notice all the ugly things.

On the Road is probably the only book whose characters I truly hated. Dean Moriarty (aka Neal Cassady) – a self-centered, chauvinistic pig, who doesn’t have a shred of respect, who doesn’t care about anything or anyone; the only thing that he cares about is kicks. And this character is a role model for generations and generations of men? It’s utterly disgusting. Sal Paradise (aka Jack Kerouac) – a wuss and a wimp; coward, looser and sissy, who can only tag alone with Dean Moriarty and admire him, while the second one is spitting on him; who is forgiving everything to the pig - Dean Moriarty, just to see what other kicks he can come up with; and when the situation is hard and money all gone, Sal Paradise doesn’t know any better than to run to his aunt for help. Some men, some role models, huh?

Despite the fact that I hated all characters, I have to admit that initial idea of freedom, new experiences and adventures, does sound appealing. Truman Capote once commented about On the Road: "That isn't writing; it's typing." However, I think that Kerouac’s “typing” style worked out good for the subject matter – the road. The road, same as Kerouac’s style doesn’t have a plot, it only has incidents and accidents; the road doesn’t have the beginning and doesn’t have the end; it doesn’t have any distinct direction – you are the one who has to choose it. The road just exists from horizon to horizon, as far as the eye can reach.

In conclusion, if Kerouac’s On the Road “is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope”, I don’t want to do anything with this freedom and I want to live my life without such hope.

Linger by Maggie Stiefvater - Book Review #115

2010-11-16T12:12:00.001-05:00

Linger (The Wolves of Mercy Falls #2)

by Maggie Stiefvater

In Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver, Grace and Sam found each other. Now, in Linger, they must fight to be together. For Grace, this means defying her parents and keeping a very dangerous secret about her own well-being. For Sam, this means grappling with his werewolf past . . . and figuring out a way to survive into the future. Add into the mix a new wolf named Cole, whose own past has the potential to destroy the whole pack. And Isabelle, who already lost her brother to the wolves . . . and is nonetheless drawn to Cole.
From goodreads.com

I picked up Linger, as I said in my review of Shiver, just out of pure curiosity - what else can Maggie Stiefvater add to the story of Grace and Sam. Linger was on my desk for months, every time moving to the bottom of the to-read pile, when new books were added there, until I finally was in the mood for something completely insignificant that requires no brain activity and would be simply a time passer. And this is precisely what Linger turned out to be.

All the problems that arose for the characters in Linger seemed to be farfetched and forced – just something to write about. Sam acted even more gay than he was in Shiver and I kept wondering when we will finally get out of the closet and stop pretending to love Grace as his girlfriend. Grace was still boring and plain, so plain that I sometimes was completely forgetting about her existence. Isabel was much more significant character than Grace, even though quite far from interesting as well. Cole was a bit of fresh air in this insignificant cast of unnoticeable characters – at least he had some personality.

The only really interesting aspect for me in Linger was further unveiling of werewolves’ origins: is it a disease, how it works, is it curable. I still enjoyed, at times utterly bizarre, Maggie Stiefvater’s original takes on werewolves.

This time, with Linger, Maggie Stiefvater didn’t wrap the story into the happy ending and finished the book on a cliffhanger. However, it is hard to pretend that any sensible person couldn’t guess how this story is going to end. The only mystery is details.

Conclusion: Linger was what I expected it to be – mindless, numb time passer. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to call Linger a bad book. I’m just trying to describe it as what it was for me. And I’m a strong believer that each and every book can find its audience whether in different people or in the same people in different moods or at different periods of their lives. So…nothing to see…moving along…

The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy - Book Review #114

2010-11-15T10:53:00.003-05:00

The Black Dahlia

by James Ellroy

On January 15, 1947, the tortured body of a beautiful young woman was found in a vacant lot in Hollywood. Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, a young Hollywood hopeful, had been brutally murdered. Her murder sparked one of the greatest manhunts in California history.

In this fictionalized treatment of a real case, Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard, both LA cops obsessed with the Black Dahlia, journey through the seamy underside of Hollywood to the core of the dead girl's twisted life.
From goodreads.com

“Cherchez la femme” is a phrase that became international. It is a phrase that has thousands of meanings; can be used and was used in thousands of different situations. However, at the same time it still has the same and the only meaning: “Cherchez la femme.” Ellroy wasn’t the first and not going to be the last author to use this phrase, to build pretty much the whole plot on this phrase. In Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia “Cherchez la femme” radiates with different meanings at every point of the story and still, every time, it stays the same, old, overused, cliché phrase. Paradox? – Most certainly.

I expected to love The Black Dahlia – a fictionalized version of world known, horrific, unsolved murder. So many people loved the book and so many described it as glue that will hold you to your chair until you are done and as a fastest page flipper until the very end. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see anything special in this book – some parts were interesting, some were boring; sometimes I couldn’t stop reading, other times I was finding every excuse not to read it.

There were some aspects that I liked about the book: it was very atmospheric; I learned a lot of 40th slang, in particular 40th cops’ slang. There were also aspects that drove me away from this book: for some reason I didn’t care enough about characters; the book started very slow and it took sixty pages for plot to start unveiling; I didn’t feel any suspense until the almost very end – the whole story read like unconnected, isolated events. No, at the end, fortunately, they all come into one whole piece (the moment when the book actually became glue and a page flipper).

Bottom line – The Black Dahlia turned out to be precisely what it was: suspense, noir, detective story, nothing more – nothing less. It was nothing very significant, however it wasn’t awful either. If you are into noir fiction or you are interested in fictionalized version of Black Dahlia case, check this book out. For everyone else, I would advise to pass on this book. Paradox? – Certainly not.

The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff - Book Review #113

2010-11-12T10:38:00.000-05:00

The Replacement

by Brenna Yovanoff

Mackie Doyle is not one of us. Though he lives in the small town of Gentry, he comes from a world of tunnels and black murky water, a world of living dead girls ruled by a little tattooed princess. He is a Replacement, left in the crib of a human baby sixteen years ago. Now, because of fatal allergies to iron, blood, and consecrated ground, Mackie is fighting to survive in the human world.

Mackie would give anything to live among us, to practice on his bass or spend time with his crush, Tate. But when Tate's baby sister goes missing, Mackie is drawn irrevocably into the underworld of Gentry, known as Mayhem. He must face the dark creatures of the Slag Heaps and find his rightful place, in our world, or theirs.
From goodreads.com

I wanted to read this book since I first saw the cover, sometime in February. Isn’t it creepy-gorgeous in somewhat disturbing way? At that point of time I couldn’t find any information about the book: no synopsis, no rumors, only the cover and the title. Despite that, The Replacement immediately went into my to-read list. Later on when the synopsis was finally available, my excitement for the book went down. Tattooed princess? Living dead girls? Fatal allergies to iron and blood? And the only thing he wants is to be normal and spend time with his crush? It sounded like just another, not too good, YA paranormal. However, when the book was finally released I was in the mood for “just another, not too good, YA paranormal”, so I picked it up.

From the ten thousand foot view, my suspicions were confirmed. However, after a closer look, I found discrepancies with “just another YA paranormal”. The Replacement is getting points from me for… no, not originality of the plot, but reinvention of old, and still can be called as forgotten, fairy lore. And more points to The Replacement for being a standalone novel, not a part of another never-ending series. Well, of course, you can never be sure and the author can always make a series out of standalone novel. However, I really hope that Brenna Yovanoff won’t do that with The Replacement.

Everything else, unfortunately, falls into the mediocre category.

Characters were mostly boring and clichés, with an exception of Mackie Doyle, whose characterization was confusing. He presented as a freak and loner, however he has friends, who are not freaks and loners; and girls (plural!) are interested in him.

Brenna Yovanoff’s writing sometimes read as forced and mouthful. Her selection of words at some points reminded me of the scene from Friends, when Joey is writing a letter of recommendations on Monica and Chandler to adoption agency and to sound better he replaced his words with smarter ones.

Bottom line is The Replacement was an OK book. It has its flaws and has some good qualities. Since it was a debut novel for Brenna Yovanoff, I hope we will see more and better works from her in the future. I will probably keep an eye on her upcoming works.

The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez - Book Review #112

2010-11-10T12:21:00.001-05:00

The Autumn of the Patriarch

by Gabriel García Márquez

“Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside”

As the citizens of an unnamed Caribbean nation creep through dusty corridors in search of their tyrannical leader, they cannot comprehend that the frail and withered man lying dead on the floor can be the self-styled General of the Universe. Their arrogant, maniacally violent leader, known for serving up traitors to dinner guests and drowning young children at sea, can surely not die the humiliating death of a mere mortal?

Tracing the demands of a man whose egocentric excesses mask the loneliness of isolation and whose lies have become so ingrained that they are indistinguishable from truth, Márquez has created a fantastical portrait of despotism that rings with an air of reality.
From goodreads.com

I dreaded the moment when I would have to write a review on The Autumn of the Patriarch, because I’m so out of my league here, trying to describe the genius of Gabriel García Márquez. However, I’m unable to stay silent, unable not to mention probably one of the greatest and unique books I’ve ever read, one of the books that blew me away, one of the books that showed me that there could not be any other limitation in the literature other than author’s own abilities; and if an author is not afraid to break shackles that his own mind or society put on him, even the sky is not a limit.

It is probably the writing style that makes this book so unique. Márquez broke all the rules here: there are not paragraphs; there is hardly any punctuation: sentences run for five – ten pages, there are not quotes to distinguish the dialogs; Márquez switches the point of view multiple times in one sentence and sometimes in one line. I won’t lie to you, his technique intimidated me at the beginning. I was imagining that it will be a very frustrating and confusing experience that will drag for a while, despite the fact that the book it not long at all. However, what could have been a recipe for the disaster in any other hands, turned out to be an unforgettable delight in Márquez’s.

It took Márquez seven years to write The Autumn of the Patriarch and I’m surprised it didn’t took him seventeen – to write in such style and still make everything crystal clear for the reader: whose point of view it is, what time is that, did someone said it, or it is the General talking to himself in his own head. Márquez achieved impossible with The Autumn of the Patriarch, he managed to put in words and on the paper person’s thoughts and experience of the world as they are – we rarely think in full, grammatically correct sentences; we almost never experience the world in distinguished paragraphs; and we never put conversations in quotation marks in our head.

General of the Universe, the usurper, the patriarch, the dictator and the main character of the novel is another Márquez’ stunning achievement. In General Márquez united the characteristics and abilities of the world known dictators – Stalin, Castro, Mussolini, Kim Jong-II and many others, dead or alive. Through the whole story at one point or another, I could see one of these faces staring at me from the pages. Márquez also showed us the other side of probably any dictator’s character – the weakness, paranoia, inability to most of the human emotions and loneliness (complete and overwhelming). Márquez combined in General the best and the worst of the human nature, making it impossible for readers to have one defined emotion toward him (hate or pity) and also making General a real person, not some one-dimensional caricature.

There are so much more in this novel that can’t be explained or described. There are so much more that everyone should experience and feel for themselves. At times, The Autumn of the Patriarch read like a dream, completely distant and enchanted. At other times, it reminded to me Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights. And at all times it was an unforgettable experience. I would recommend this book to everyone, who is not afraid of the challenge, because this book can be quite demanding sometimes when Márquez is drowning you in words, metaphors, similes and magical realism as whole. I would recommend this book to everyone who wants an amazing, breathtaking, overwhelming and magical experience. After all this is the only book that describes how the sea is sold, put on the ship, moved to another location and what left after in its place.

Book Blogger Holiday Swap

2010-11-09T15:28:00.000-05:00

Come one, Come all!

It's Book Blogger Holiday Swap!

I found it on Linus's Blanket and loved the idea. You can read about it and join the fun at the Book Bloggers Holiday Swap. Hurry up, the sign up ends on November 14, 2010.

Chess Story by Stefan Zweig - Book Review #111

2010-11-09T10:27:00.001-05:00

Chess Story

by Stefan Zweig

On a cruise ship bound for Buenos Aires, a wealthy passenger challenges the world chess champion to a match. He accepts with a sneer. He will beat anyone, he says. But only if the stakes are high. Soon, the chess board is surrounded. At first, the challenger crumbles before the mind of the master. But then, a soft-spoken voice from the crowd begins to whisper nervous suggestions. There are perfect moves and brilliant predictions. The speaker has not played a game for more than twenty years, he says. He is wholly unknown. But somehow, he is also entirely formidable!
From goodreads.com

Chess Story, also known as Royal Game, is a very short – fifty to one hundred pages, depending on edition, novella. This was the last work of Stefan Zweig, published posthumously, after he and his wife committed double suicide in Brazil, exiled from Germany by Nazis.

Chess Story glued me to the chair until I finished it. This is a quite unique story and it manages to stay unique without leaning towards the bizarre angle – everything in this story is realistic, everything is tangible.

Chess Story is a novella about two people: the world chess champion – an extraordinary person in quite ordinary situation; and a lawyer – a very ordinary person who was forced into the extraordinary situation. This is the story about human limitations. This is the story about survival and what it takes. This is the story about dark secrets and painful mysteries from the past. And of course, this is the story about chess; about excitement, passion and vehemence that this game (or is it more than a game) evokes.

"And are we not guilty of offensive disparagement in calling chess a game? Is it not also a science and an art, hovering between those categories as Muhammad's coffin hovered between heaven and earth, a unique link between pairs of opposites: ancient yet eternally new; mechanical in structure, yet made effective only by the imagination; limited to a geometrically fixed space, yet with unlimited combinations; constantly developing, yet sterile; thought that leads nowhere; mathematics calculating nothing; art without works of art; architecture without substance - but nonetheless shown to be more durable in its entity and existence than all books and works of art; the only game that belongs to all nations and all eras, although no one knows what god brought it down to earth to vanquish boredom, sharpen the senses and stretch the mind."

The narration is overwhelmingly excellent – it will make you shiver.

I loved this story so much, that I recommend it to everyone. I believe that every person will be able to find something for himself in this short, but powerful novella.

Moscow-Petushki by Venedikt Erofeev - Book Review #110

2010-11-08T10:46:00.001-05:00

Moscow-Petushki

by Venedikt Erofeev

In this classic novel of Russian humor and social commentary, a cable fitter is fired from his job after accidentally sending out detailed graphs charting his coworkers' productivity against the amount of alcohol they consumed.
From goodreads.com

Moscow-Petushki, also known as Moscow to the End of the Line, Moscow Stations and Moscow Circles is a pseudo-autobiographical prose poem about a cable fitter, intellectual and alcoholic – Venichka – who was fired from his job, for the graphs creation of his and his coworkers’ productivity against the amount of alcohol they intake. After he is fired, Venichka decided to travel from Moscow to the 125 kilometer (77 miles) away town – Petushki, to visit his lover and a child.

The whole novel is set during Venichka’s travel. While on the train, he drinks and engages in conversations with different people and with himself, discussing the wide variety of subjects from politics to religion, from philosophy to literature, from recipes to make different alcoholic “cocktails”(from eau de toilette, nails polish and other products that contain alcohol) to the meaning of life. As novel progress and as more Venichka drinks, novel becoming more and more surrealistic, hallucinogenic and dark.

Some view this novel as a sarcastic overview of the soviet life during late 60th. Other, consider it to be a cry for help, a cry for changes in the system and in the everyday life. I will not get into discussion on this, because I don’t think that this novel can be easily classified. For me it was hilarious and tragic, illuminating and devastating at the same time.

I really enjoyed Erofeev’s humor, which was based on paronomasia, or play on words. The grace, with which he interlaces words into most elegant and unobtrusive humor, was amazing and captivating. It is hard for me to judge, but I think that the novel in general and its humor in particular, might be hard to understand for people who is not closely familiar with everyday life of regular Russian people during late 60th, with policies and views of same period, with Marx’ and Lenin’s quotes and with Russian literature.

Moscow-Petushki also seems like a very hard to translate novel. First of all, it is prose poem, so it has a specific rhythm and pace. Second, it seems to me that in hands of not very good translator a lot of nuances of the humor might be lost (or maybe these nuances even untranslatable). I read this book in Russian and I didn’t check any translations, so I can’t really comment if a good job or not was done or not.

I loved Venedikt Erofeev’s Moscow-Petushki. It might be the best Russian book that was written at the crack of 70th. I would recommend this book to the Russian literature enthusiasts and to the satire lovers. For everyone else? – Only in case you are really interested.

All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris - Book Review #109

2010-11-04T11:29:00.000-04:00

All Together Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #7)

by Charlaine Harris

Betrayed by her longtime vampire love, Louisiana cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse must now not only deal with a possible new man in her life-the oh-so-handsome shapeshifter Quinn-but also contend with a long-planned vampire summit. With her power base weakened by hurricane damage to New Orleans, the local vampire queen is vulnerable to those hungry for a takeover. Soon, Sookie must decide what side she'll stand with. And her choice may mean the difference between survival and all-out catastrophe.
From goodreads.com

Ah Sookie, Sookie… Can’t live with you, can’t live without you. As I already said not once in my previous reviews of earlier books of Sookie Stackhouse series, these series are not a great literature, at any stretch of the imagination. However, these books are definitely entertaining so much that I’m willing to forgive all the holes in the plot, all the imperfections in characters development, all the insanity in the story and far from perfect writing style. I keep reading this series, because after a long tough day, when my brain and my limbs are numb and I just physically can’t think or do anything anymore, these books are the perfect solution not only to relax your body and brain, but also to boost your mood.

All Together Dead is a seventh installment in the long running series about cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse living in normal (real) paranormal (there are so many creatures, humans just have not idea exist) world. The seventh book started very slow for me. It seems like Charlaine Harris was just touching basis with all the secondary characters and updating the reader on their latest live events. Unfortunately, neither these characters, no these events didn’t play any role in the story, so I couldn’t care less about them.

However, I really enjoyed the culmination of the story. Somehow it felt more realistically dramatic than culminations in the previous books, which read like a child’s make-believe play. The climax and Sookie’s decisions at the end showed how much she grew as a person in the light of these events. No, she probably still is not acting or thinking like an adult, but at least she is much less clueless, as she used to be.

Overall, I’m continuing to enjoy Sookie Stackhouse series. After All Together Dead, I’m more than ever curious to find out how the story will unravel and I already have the eighth book on my desk, waiting for me to read it.

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw - Book Review #108

2010-11-03T11:24:00.002-04:00

Pygmalion

by George Bernard Shaw

Written in 1912, Pygmalion quickly became a legend in its own time. The characters, situations, and dialogue Bernard Shaw supplies are rich, ebullient, and unmatched in wit as the infamous Henry Higgins prepares to "make a duchess of this draggletailed guttersnipe.”

Thus begins this classic tale as Shaw pokes fun at smugness and priggish conventionality. Who can forget professor Henry Higgins with his passionate interest in the science of phonetics and the improvement of British speech, or of course, poor Eliza Doolittle, who is one of the great heroines of the 20th century?

Get ready to enjoy the greatest Shaw romp of them all as Higgins prepares to transform a common flower girl into a creature "the king of England would accept as royalty.”
From goodreads.com

When I was around six years old, my mother took me to see Pygmalion for the first time. It was most likely my first adult play that I saw. At that time I didn’t know what Pygmalion meant, who was George Bernard Shaw and what was phonetics. I saw Pygmalion play countless times performed by different troupes. I saw different movie adaptations. And very fast the story became one of my favorites.

After each play we saw, while we were walking along the sea coast line in downtown, my mother told me something new about Pygmalion. It was from her I learned that phonetics was a study of human speech sounds. She was the one who told me that Shaw’s Pygmalion was loosely based on Ovid's tale about sculptor who created an ivory statue of a beautiful woman, fall in love with it and begged Venus to change the statue into the real woman. The more my mother was telling me about that play, the more I was falling in love with it.

However, I have never read Pygmalion until now. And I couldn’t deprive myself of this satisfaction, even though plays are not meant to be read – they are meant to be performed and watched. I remembered almost every line, I remembered even intonation with which actors were delivering that line and I still couldn’t stop reading or laughing. When I reached the end of the play, I was shocked that I actually didn’t remember the original ending of the play. The whole time, while reading, I was thinking about My Fair Lady’s variation of the ending. The whole time during fourth and fifth acts, I could not believe that Bernard Shaw will end his play the way I remembered; I could not imagine how could he, under such circumstances. And of cause he did not. Even though George Bernard Shaw wrote a story based on Ovid's tale, he added a feminist twist: at the end his beautiful statue refuses to be his creation.

This wit, enlightening and brilliant story has been entertaining generation after generation since its first production in 1914 and I believe it will continue doing so for countless more generations to come.

Perfume by by Patrick Süskind - Book Review #107

2010-11-02T11:05:00.000-04:00

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

by Patrick Süskind

In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift-an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.
From goodreads.com

I read Perfume because I loved the movie and also because the world of smells is very important to me. I quite often use olfaction to distinguish or remember events, people or feelings. No, I cannot smell people like Jean-Baptiste Grenouille could, though I usually remember their perfume, or smell of soap; I can remember the scent of the blossoming jasmine outside of my window while I was talking to someone on the phone; or perhaps the smell of ozone just before the rain starts and odor of wet dirt after it is over while I was reading some book on lanai.

My only problem with scents was always my inability to actually describe it. So my descriptions usually go as: it smells like a dream; it is a smell of victory; this is the scent of late March; or this is how the mid summer afternoon smells. Maybe because of this my inability I was so much impressed with Perfume. Patrick Susskind’s skill to describe smells (any smells – pleasant or utterly disgusting) is amazing. He could not only make me understand what he was talking about, he actually made me smell it.

"Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it."

Perfume is probably the only book that deals with scents on such level. The scent is a main character in this novel, not Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, who is merely a this scent‘s guide to our world. That’s why I disagree with the second part of the book title (The Story of a Murderer). No, Grenouille did commit murders, but only to achieve his goal, which completely unrelated to these murders. Patrick Süskind not revealing anything about murder victims: we don’t know who they were, what their interests were, what they dreamed about, who they loved or hated; in most cases we don’t even know their names. In this situation it is almost impossible to care about these victims as people, we made by Süskind to only care about their scent, same as Grenouille does.

I enjoyed the ending of the book beyond any reason – an utter grotesque on one hand, and on the other, something breathtakingly beautiful:

“For the first time they had done something out of Love.”

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the world of fragrance. Süskind did a tremendous research to deliver us the knowledge how the perfumery business worked in eighteen-century, including detailed descriptions of different techniques. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in reading something completely original. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for strong emotions, because Perfume undeniably delivers that.

"He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men."

Paranormalcy by Kiersten White - Book Review #106

2010-11-01T11:01:00.000-04:00

Paranormalcy

by Kiersten White

Weird as it is working for the International Paranormal Containment Agency, Evie's always thought of herself as normal. Sure, her best friend is a mermaid, her ex-boyfriend is a faerie, she’s falling for a shape-shifter, and she’s the only person who can see through paranormals' glamours, but still. Normal.

Only now paranormals are dying, and Evie's dreams are filled with haunting voices and mysterious prophecies. She soon realizes that there may be a link between her abilities and the sudden rash of deaths. Not only that, but she may very well be at the center of a dark faerie prophecy promising destruction to all paranormal creatures.

So much for normal.
From goodreads.com

It either I was on the roll when I was picking up a bunch of YA paranormal romances lately or the genre itself, finally, has being getting some good works. Either way, I’m happy to report that Paranormalcy have a solid plot, interesting characters and gorgeous boys. It is undeniably cute and definitely paranormal down to the bone.

Paranormalcy is a cross between Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gallagher Girls series (I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You) and something else that I can’t really pin point. A vague resemblance to this two works doesn’t make Paranormalcy any less original or enjoyable. Kiersten White managed to combine strong heroine who can kick some serious paranormal asses from Buffy and the whole secret agency with lots of cool gadgets extravaganza form Gallagher Girls, add some romance and humor (Evie's fascination with lockers) and present us with something completely new – an YA paranormal chick lit.

My only concern with Paranormalcy was that the plot and events in the book were too lightheaded. There was not enough urgency and villain wasn’t bad and scary enough. It seemed like there was no serious threat to Evie and she was shielding herself out of issues almost during the whole story (I mean, I can understand her: what was going on – wasn’t really her problem. Why should she give up everything and run towards the danger?). And almost at very end Kiersten White, finally, made Evie face problems that were piling up and not only face them, the author also made these issues Evie’s issues. Unfortunately, the resolution to the problems was too easy.

However, overall, Paranormalcy was very enjoyable, relaxing and cute read. I can’t wait to read the sequel – Supernaturally. I would recommend this book to every chick lit, YA and paranormal romance genre lovers. I think that so far Paranormalcy might be one of the best works in this cross gender mix.

Mini Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella - Book Review #105

2010-10-29T10:10:00.002-04:00

Mini Shopaholic (Shopaholic #6)

by Sophie Kinsella

Nothing comes between Becky Brandon (née Bloomwood) and her bargains. Neither act of God nor budget crunch can shatter her dreams of wall-to-wall Prada. Every milestone in her well-shopped life (travel, long-lost sister, marriage, pregnancy) inspires new vistas to explore in the name of retail therapy. But now she faces her greatest little challenge yet: Becky’s two-year-old daughter, Minnie.

While motherhood has been everything Becky dreamed it would be—Baby Dior, Little Marc Jacobs, and Dolce & Gabbana for toddlers—adorable Minnie is wreaking havoc everywhere she goes, from Harrods to her own christening. Her favorite word is “MINE!” and her penchant for Balenciaga bags, Chanel sunglasses, and online purchases has no rival under age five.

Becky is at her wits end. On top of this, she and her husband Luke are still living with her parents. Thankfully it appears house buying attempt number four is a go! Until a huge financial crisis causes panic everywhere, and nobody wants to shop—not Becky’s personal shopping clientele, not her friends, nobody. And with Luke in the doldrums, it’s time for Becky to step in—with a party: A surprise birthday party for Luke (on a budget) is the perfect antidote to everyone’s woes. At first.

Will Becky manage to keep the party of the year a surprise? Can she hire jugglers, fire-eaters, and acrobats at a discount? Will enlisting the help of Luke’s unflappable assistant to convince him to have another baby realize her dream of matching pom-poms? Will Minnie find a new outlet for her energetic and spirited nature (perhaps one with sixty percent markdowns)? She is, after all, a chip off the old shopping block. And everyone knows a committed shopper always finds a way.
From goodreads.com

I think that Confession of Shopaholic was one of the first books I read in chick lit genre and Shopaholic series is definitely my favorite. I’m suspecting that the only reason why I read so many chick lit books is that I was looking for something that would at least remotely resemble it and be at least as half as funny as Sophie Kinsella’s books. For years I’ve been looking for something like this, and I think, now I can say with all the confidence that there are no contemporary authors that can make me laugh out loud and as much as Sophie Kinsella can.

Becky Brandon (née Bloomwood) is probably one of my favorite characters ever. She is adorably inappropriate; she is hilariously clueless; and she is completely ingenuous. She is so full of energy, crazy ideas and good intentions – it is overwhelming. I could never guess her next actions or words. My brain just doesn’t work this way. I’m always trying to come up with something reasonable and believable; and these are two qualities that Becky is lacking completely.

Mini Shopaholic was a great addition to the series. Sophie Kinsella is one of the rare authors whose books don’t become worse with each next book in a series. I was very happy with the ending of Mini Shopaholic, which almost directly indicated that we should expect another book about Becky.

I think that there is no reason for me to recommend this book to anyone, because if you like chick lit, you most definitely heard and read Sophie Kinsella’s books and you won’t miss this one; and if you haven’t, you are most likely from another dimension. However, I’m sure that even in another dimension or another universe people have heard about Sophie Kinsella, because she has a talent to make even nuclear physics hilarious.

Nevermore by Kelly Creagh - Book Review #104

2010-10-28T10:19:00.000-04:00

Nevermore

by Kelly Creagh

Cheerleader Isobel Lanley is horrified when she is paired with Varen Nethers for an English project, which is due—so unfair—on the day of the rival game. Cold and aloof, sardonic and sharp-tongued, Varen makes it clear he’d rather not have anything to do with her either. But when Isobel discovers strange writing in his journal, she can’t help but give this enigmatic boy with the piercing eyes another look.

Soon, Isobel finds herself making excuses to be with Varen. Steadily pulled away from her friends and her possessive boyfriend, Isobel ventures deeper and deeper into the dream world Varen has created through the pages of his notebook, a realm where the terrifying stories of Edgar Allan Poe come to life.

As her world begins to unravel around her, Isobel discovers that dreams, like words, hold more power than she ever imagined, and that the most frightening realities are those of the mind. Now she must find a way to reach Varen before he is consumed by the shadows of his own nightmares.

His life depends on it.
From goodreads.com

Have you ever met a person who was so enthusiastic about some subject at which you never even look twice before? And more you talk to that person, read that person’s works, more you are getting infected by the enthusiasm towards that particular topic. And after a while you are starting to research the subject yourself and getting more and more involved into something that you were sure you would never be interested in. I have met such people and not once. Kelly Creagh – the author of Nevermore – turned out to be on f these people for me.

I have picked up Nevermore not expecting anything more than another cheesy, predictable, boring, full of clichés, one of a very long line of YA paranormal romances. I was in a mood for something like that. Yeah, I know, it is weird, but I can sometimes be in a mood for something that I know is going to be bad from the beginning.

Fortunately (because it is always a good thing when something is better than you thought it would be) or unfortunately (because I was in a mood for something else) – there is always two sides to everything – Nevermore was something completely different from what I was expecting.

I’m not even sure what made this book a good one. Maybe Kelly Creagh is a good writer. I really enjoyed her writing style. Her descriptions were superb: on one hand she didn’t overdo them, going into unnecessary details; on the other hand, she gave enough to the reader to build in the imagination a personal picture, unique to each reader, based on the author’s details.

Maybe the worlds of Edgar Allan Poe made this book so unique and compelling. I’m not an expert or a big fun of Poe’s works, so I can’t really judge if Creagh did a good job on recreating his worlds or not. The only thing I can tell is that these worlds got into me and under my skin – after reading Nevermore and turning off the light at night, I began to imagine black shadows around the room.

Maybe it was a great cast of likable, fully flashed and interesting characters that made Nevermore a good book. Varen had so much more in himself than your usual – “I’m mysterious, bad guy and I love you for no good reason eternally.” And Isobel was so much more than you regular brainless, boring, “I have no life and no friends” and “my parents let me do anything and anyone” cheerleader.

Maybe it was a spectacular ending that made this book a good one. Yes, I loved the ending. I know that there are a lot of people who are angry at such a cliffhanger, but I, myself, consider it a very good, logical and interesting one.

Maybe it is something else. Maybe it is a sum of all the factors. I really don’t know what made Nevermore a good book. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it and I also enjoyed “meeting” Kelly Creagh. I’m grateful for her enthusiasm towards Edgar Allan Poe and his works. She made me interested in him and “look” at him again. Maybe I will read more of his stories. After all, so many people think that he was a genius. However, the thing that I’m sure about is that I’m planning to read second book in Nevermore series.

A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift - Book Review #103

2010-10-26T09:36:00.000-04:00

A Modest Proposal

by Jonathan Swift

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Swift appears to suggest in his essay that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies. By doing this he mocks the authority of the British officials.
From wikipedia.org

A Modest Proposal is a satire in its final glory that follows all the best traditions of Roman satire. It is brilliant, hilarious, completely logical, argumentative and disturbing, at the same time; so it is basically everything that Juvenalian satire should be. It is a must read for everyone.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - Book Review #102

2010-10-25T11:27:00.001-04:00

Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy

A magnificent drama of vengeance, infidelity, and retribution, Anna Karenina portrays the moving story of people whose emotions conflict with the dominant social mores of their time. Sensual, rebellious Anna falls deeply and passionately in love with the handsome Count Vronsky. When she refuses to conduct the discreet affair that her cold, ambitious husband (and Russian high society) would condone, she is doomed. Set against the tragic love of Anna and Vronsky, the plight of the melancholy nobleman Konstantine Levin unfolds. In doubt about the meaning of life, haunted by thoughts of suicide, Levin's struggles echo Tolstoy's own spiritual crisis. But Anna's inner turmoil mirrors the own emotional imprisonment and mental disintegration of a woman who dares to transgress the strictures of a patriarchal world....In Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy brought to perfection the novel of social realism and created a masterpiece that bared the Russian soul.
From goodreads.com

It was a long journey for me towards Anna Karenina. My mother recommended it to me when I was thirteen. The way she talked about it made me pick up the book with great enthusiasm. I read it the whole day long, unable to draw my eyes out of it. When it was time to go to bed, I closed the book and next day… I never opened it again. When I was seventeen, after reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, which made an unforgettable impression on me, I decided to give Anna Karenina another try. Unfortunately, the story repeated itself and I didn’t open the book next day. After that for years my thoughts were coming back to Anna Karenina. I was completely clueless what made me read this book for a day, like there was no tomorrow and next day had no desire to open it again. I was obviously interested in it while I was reading, but somehow, over the night, my interest was just magically evaporated. So I was thinking about Anna Karenina, was trying to analyze my experience with it, however, I never made an attempt to read it again, until about a month ago when I felt this unexplainable need to read one of the greatest books that were ever written.

It took me a month (precisely a month, I started it on September 22 and finished it October 22) to read it. Anna Karenina is a book that takes a lot of time to read and not only because of its length (over eighth hundred pages), but mostly because of its content. I loved some pieces of the book beyond imaginable, other pieces was boring and dragged for me. However, the whole book is full of wisdom and I couldn’t just breath through it, I had to stop and think, make some decisions for myself, before I could continue reading it again. So the most time for me took my thought process and not reading.

Anna Karenina is a book about life and not only that; it is a piece of life itself. It seems like Tolstoy covered pretty much every topic of life that might have touched Russian society of 1870th. However, the most amazing thing for me was how Tolstoy could see people, how he knew their thoughts and reasonings, their fears and desires and mostly how extremely well and honest he was able to write about it. It seemed to me that every single emotion I've ever felt and every thought I've ever had, had already been felt and thought and written by Tolstoy generations before I was even born. Reading Anna Karenina was like going through my own thoughts, but on some other, much deeper lever – level where I’ve never been before.

I’m not going to recommend Anna Karenina to anyone, not because I didn’t like it – I loved it, but because to read or not to read Anna Karenina or when to read it in your path of life is a very personal decision and a very big commitment. This is a book that either can ruin you or reborn you from the ashes, depending if you read it during the right moment of your life or not.

Splendor by Anna Godbersen - Book Review #101

2010-10-22T09:36:00.000-04:00

Splendor (Luxe Series #4)

by Anna Godbersen

New beginnings.

Shocking revelations.

Unexpected endings.

As spring turns into summer, Elizabeth relishes her new role as a young wife, while her sister, Diana, searches for adventure abroad. But when a surprising clue about their father's death comes to light, the Holland girls wonder at what cost a life of splendor comes.

Carolina Broad, society's newest darling, fans a flame from her past, oblivious to how it might burn her future. Penelope Schoonmaker is finally Manhattan royalty—but when a real prince visits the city, she covets a title that comes with a crown. Her husband, Henry, bravely went to war, only to discover that his father's rule extends well beyond New York's shores and that fighting for love may prove a losing battle.

In the dramatic conclusion to the bestselling Luxe series, New York's most dazzling socialites chase dreams, cling to promises, and tempt fate. As society watches what will become of the city's oldest families and newest fortunes, one question remains: Will its stars fade away or will they shine ever brighter?
From goodreads.com

Splendor was a very good ending to the quite mediocre series. To be honest, I didn’t expect much from this book. I somewhat enjoyed the first book, but after that the series went downhill – second book was worse and the third was a big disappointment to me.

I picked up the fourth book just to finish the series, just to be over with it. And I’m glad that I did. Because of the fourth book, Anna Godbersen grew in my eyes as a writer and as the story teller. As I said already, I didn’t expect much from this book, for quite some time already I started to consider Luxe series a collection of predictable and soap operish clichés. However, Splendor pleasantly surprised me – the plot became stronger, characters more complex, clichés faded out and the ending was superb.

I can’t say that I was surprised by the ending itself, I found it quite logical. However, it was definitely unexpected to me that Anna Godbersen had guts to finish her series this way. I’m very glad that she gave each character what they deserved and didn’t feel a need to sugar coat or pink bow any of the story lines.

I will probably take a pick at Anna Godbersen’s next series – Bright Young Things – just to see if the charge that happened to the author in the fourth book was for the best or simply a pure coincidence.

Sapphique by Catherine Fisher - Book Review #100

2010-10-21T10:00:00.000-04:00

Sapphique (Incarceron, #2)

by Catherine Fisher

Finn has escaped from the terrible living Prison of Incarceron, but its memory torments him, because his brother Keiro is still inside. Outside, Claudia insists he must be king, but Finn doubts even his own identity. Is he the lost prince Giles? Or are his memories no more than another construct of his imprisonment? And can you be free if your friends are still captive? Can you be free if your world is frozen in time? Can you be free if you don't even know who you are? Inside Incarceron, has the crazy sorcerer Rix really found the Glove of Sapphique, the only man the Prison ever loved. Sapphique, whose image fires Incarceron with the desire to escape its own nature. If Keiro steals the glove, will he bring destruction to the world?

Inside.
Outside.
All seeking freedom.
Like Sapphique.
From goodreads.com

After I finished Incarceron (I read it in the late March 2010), I just couldn’t wait almost a year until the US edition of Incarceron’s sequel – Sapphique – will be out (December 28th 2010), so I ordered UK edition and started reading it as soon as it arrived.

If I say that I loved Catherine Fisher’s story of Incarceron, I wouldn’t say anything. Incarceron and Sapphique are probably the best fantasy books of the year, if not of last years. Incarceron’s world was so completely unique, compelling and didn’t resemble the real world (no surprise here, after all it is a fantasy). However, Fisher managed to make it so vivid and realistic, I easily stepped into it as soon as I cracked the book open.

Sapphique, as a sequel, didn’t disappoint. It kept the same incredible pace as the first book had, which made me flip through the pages like crazy. Sapphique is picking up where Incarceron has left off, but not resolving any of the burning-a-hole-through-your-brain questions, rather creating new ones, opening up doors to the new mysteries, binding you down to the book and not letting you down for a moment until it is over.

I enjoyed how Catherine Fisher worked with characterizations. By the moment I thought I had some character figured out, Fisher surprised me with new details, though surprising not in a way that it didn’t make sense, but rather in a way of complete obviousness that somehow I didn’t figure out earlier.

Sapphique gives the reader a new perspective on its characters and the story itself, on a much deeper level, luring you in such depths of the tale that only a strong, guiding hand of the author could help you get out of there alive and in your sane mind. Dive into the story of Incarceron! If you dare…

Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel - Book Review #99

2010-10-20T10:59:00.002-04:00

Infinite Days

by Rebecca Maizel

Lenah Beaudonte is, in many ways, your average teen: the new girl at Wickham Boarding School, she struggles to fit in enough to survive and stand out enough to catch the eye of the golden-boy lacrosse captain. But Lenah also just happens to be a recovering five-hundred-year-old vampire queen. After centuries of terrorizing Europe, Lenah is able to realize the dream all vampires have -- to be human again. After performing a dangerous ritual to restore her humanity, Lenah entered a century-long hibernation, leaving behind the wicked coven she ruled over and the eternal love who has helped grant her deep-seated wish.

Until, that is, Lenah draws her first natural breath in centuries at Wickham and rediscovers a human life that bears little resemblance to the one she had known. As if suddenly becoming a teenager weren’t stressful enough, each passing hour brings Lenah closer to the moment when her abandoned coven will open the crypt where she should be sleeping and find her gone. As her borrowed days slip by, Lenah resolves to live her newfound life as fully as she can. But, to do so, she must answer ominous questions: Can an ex-vampire survive in an alien time and place? What can Lenah do to protect her new friends from the bloodthirsty menace about to descend upon them? And how is she ever going to pass her biology midterm?
From goodreads.com

Some time ago I had, as I thought, a brilliant idea – a book idea – about some very old (I’m talking hundreds and maybe even thousands years old) vampire with all his/her wisdom, knowledge and hunting him/her down ruthlessness losing all his/her power – becoming human? – and trying to fit into the society and a live normal, not vampire’s, life. I toyed with this idea for a while and then, on the next day, I found Infinite Days on goodreads. So I had to pick this book up pretty much as soon as it was out to see who “stole” my idea and how it was executed.

My verdict – Infinite Days is a “check your brains out of the door” and “mind candy” sort of book. As I started to read it I realized that it was like a train wreck: you know it is going to be horrible, but you can’t take your eye out of it.

As soon as I was letting myself to think, to analyze events, character’s motivations, their actions, I wanted to close this book and never open it again – so many things just didn’t make any sense. However, as soon as I let it go and made myself to relax and just go with whatever was happening in the story, Infinite Days proved to be a quite entertaining piece of fiction. I’ll tell you more, the moment I let the story to lead me, not minding however senseless and bizarre places it was taking me, I couldn’t put the book down.

The most, I enjoyed pieces of Lenah’s flashbacks of the times when she was a vampire. They added a quite delectable flavor to the story. These flashbacks also showed that vampires in Rebecca Maizel’s world are evil, cruel and don’t care about humanity in general and some human individuals in particular.

Overall, I enjoyed Infinite Days and would recommend it to the people who love paranormal genre and can let go of the sanity for the period while reading the book. I’m planning to read the second book in this series - Stolen Nights, however probably not as soon as it will be out, but when I will not be in overcritical and analytical mood; but rather in the mood to relax and read anything that the author will feed me with, despite of what that would be, because Rebecca Maizel knows how to tell a story.

The Shining by Stephen King - Book Review #98

2010-10-14T10:08:00.001-04:00

The Shining

by Stephen King

Danny is only five years old, but he is a 'shiner', aglow with psychic voltage. When his father becomes caretaker of an old hotel, his visions grow out of control. Cut off by blizzards, the hotel seems to develop an evil force, and who are the mysterious guests in the supposedly empty hotel?
From goodreads.com

Why is it so enormously hard for me to write reviews on Stephen King’s books? And the problem is not that I don’t have anything to say. It’s actually quite the opposite – I have so much to say, but somehow I cannot transform my feelings and my thoughts into the written word. I’m usually giving myself time after I finished a book before starting a review. And usually it helps me to write reviews – feeling and emotions are becoming less vital, reason and logic are resurfacing. However, in case of Stephen King’s books no matter how much time I give it for the book to settle in me – emotions are still staying raw and untransferable into the paper.

If I say that Stephen King is a genius, I wouldn’t say anything new… However I still want to say it – he is a genius. I probably won’t say anything new in this review at all: The Shining was published in 1977; it is wildly popular around the globe; thousands, tens thousands, hundreds thousands reviews have been written.

Should I talk about amazing characterizations and character development? It has been said not once already. Should I talk about King’s marvelous writing style – his use of italics, caps, brackets? It has been said. Should I talk how this book is about the evil in the hotel, Danny’s unusual talent, father-son relationship, alcoholism, child abuse, psychosis and dysfunctional family? It has been said million times. Should I talk about incredible pace of the novel? Or should I…?

There is only one thing left for me to say – I loved it, it is a masterpiece. And Stanley Kubrick might be a genius, but I prefer Stephen King anyway.

Red… Rum… Red-Rum… RED-RUM, RED-RUM, REDRUM, REDRUM, REDRUM (feel the beat) and “come out and take your medicine!”

My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent - Book Review #97

2010-10-13T09:55:00.000-04:00

My Soul to Take (Soul Screamers, #1)

by Rachel Vincent

She doesn't see dead people, but…

She senses when someone near her is about to die. And when that happens, a force beyond her control compels her to scream bloody murder. Literally.

Kaylee just wants to enjoy having caught the attention of the hottest guy in school. But a normal date is hard to come by when Nash seems to know more about her need to scream than she does. And when classmates start dropping dead for no apparent reason, only Kaylee knows who'll be next…
From goodreads.com

My Soul to Take is a first book in the Soul Screamers series. After reading the prequel to this series I was really eager to find out more of the Kaylee’s story.

Some call this series a paranormal romance. I would have to disagree with this classification. Even though the romance takes a large part of the story, it still doesn’t dominate it like in some other series (Shiver; Hush, Hush). I would classify Soul Screamers series as the paranormal mystery, because suspense is a main focus driving this story forward. And I would have to admit – doing a pretty good job.

Rachel Vincent wrote a pretty solid, compelling story. I was pleasantly surprised with good characterization, which usually most of the YA novels lack. I liked Kaylee and Nash. I liked their relationship. I really enjoyed the relationship between Kaylee and her cousin. I adored Kaylee’s aunt and uncle, each on their own way. All the characters were unique and well developed; each of them had their own distinct personality.

However, the main asset of the story was its originality. I will not spoil it for these who haven’t read these series and won’t tell what sort of creature with what abilities Kaylee turned out to be (even though you can easily find this information, as far as I saw people telling it openly in their review, not considering that to be a spoiler). I didn’t know what Kaylee’s abilities were when I started reading My Soul to Take, so I went through a lot of paranormal creatures in my head and at the end I weren’t able to guess. The creatures that Rachel Vincent used in her story is widely known, however definitely cannot be called a cliché.

Despite all the positive aspects that I saw in the story, somehow it was missing something… an essence, a spark. I don’t even know what… Somehow, after I finished the book, my eyes didn’t flash with excitement and “wow” didn’t flew out of my mouth on the exhale. No, I can’t say that I didn’t like it, because I did. Maybe the story itself was just too simple; no, it was solid, original, suspensive, but still too simple. Maybe I was not in the mood, maybe something else… So at the end, I thought that My Soul to Take was ok, just ok and no more than that.

My Soul to Lose by Rachel Vincent - Book Review #96

2010-10-12T09:47:00.000-04:00

My Soul to Lose (Soul Screamers, #0)

by Rachel Vincent

It was supposed to be a fun day, shopping at the mall with her best friend. Then the panic attack started and Kaylee Cavanaugh finds herself screaming, unable to stop. Her secret fears are exposed and it's the worst day of her life.

Until she wakes up in the psychiatric unit.

She tries to convince everyone she's fine--despite the shadows she sees forming around another patient and the urge to scream which comes burbling up again and again. Everyone thinks she's crazy. Everyone except Lydia, that is. Another patient with some special abilities....
From goodreads.com

I was planning to read the first book from Soul Screamers series – My Soul to Take – when I learned about prequel novella My Soul to Lose that was available for free download from B&N. (It is no longer free on B&N or Amazon, however you can still read it for free from the author’s site.) I prefer to read books in the sequential order of events in the story, not in the sequence of how they were written or when published. So I put down the first book and downloaded the prequel.

To tell you the truth I was expecting cliché YA paranormal romance. And I definitely wasn’t expecting anything grand from the tiny prequel novella – in length no more than ninety pages that was, as it seemed to me, written only for the promotional purposes. (At what any other case did you see books being given away for free?)

I got hooked on the story from the first pages. Rachel Vincent managed to create a very realistic atmosphere of the tension, confusion, loneliness and despair – the range of emotions main character, Kaylee, was going through. I also think that Rachel Vincent portrayed psychiatric unit very believable. Despite of the depressive emotions, this story was packed with action, adding fear, anxiety and anger into the spotlight of the novella. Vincent also crafted a fully fleshed out main character, endowing her with a very unique paranormal talent. I don’t think that I ever heard about YA book that explored same ability as Kaylee had. It was definitely not a cliché such as vampires and werewolf have become.

My Soul to Lose definitely raises more questions than gives answers. It turned out to be a great teaser prequel: long enough to make you interested, but not long enough to let you get a grab on everything. With more excitement and interested than I was before I read it, I leaned over, reached for the first book in the series - My Soul to Take – and cracked the cover open…

The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan - Book Review #95

2010-10-11T10:15:00.000-04:00

The Demon's Lexicon

by Sarah Rees Brennan

Nick and his brother, Alan, have spent their lives on the run from magic. Their father was murdered, and their mother was driven mad by magicians and the demons who give them power. The magicians are hunting the Ryves family for a charm that Nick's mother stole -- a charm that keeps her alive -- and they want it badly enough to kill again.

Danger draws even closer when a brother and sister come to the Ryves family for help. The boy wears a demon's mark, a sign of death that almost nothing can erase...and when Alan also gets marked by a demon, Nick is desperate to save him. The only way to do that is to kill one of the magicians they have been hiding from for so long.

Ensnared in a deadly game of cat and mouse, Nick starts to suspect that his brother is telling him lie after lie about their past. As the magicians' Circle closes in on their family, Nick uncovers the secret that could destroy them all.

This is the Demon's Lexicon. Turn the page.
From goodreads.com

The Demon's Lexicon is a compelling, fast paced, packed with action urban fantasy. I didn’t expect that much from this story. To be honest, I didn’t expect anything from it. Even though, I heard a lot of positive review on this book, it seemed to me like another cheese urban fantasy with probably flat characters, undeveloped world and weak plot.

Maybe because of my low expectations, maybe I was just wrong from the beginning, however, one way or another, I’m glad I read it – I found a new urban fantasy book and not just a book, but the first book in the trilogy that I really liked.

There are a lot of things that I liked about this book: likeable, full-flashed, alive characters; wit, funny, at the same time, realistic dialogs (I laughed out loud not once); fast paced, intriguing plot that made me turn pages with the top speed; unexpectedly shocking, on the other hand how-I-couldn’t-see-that coming huge twist on the end; very vivid descriptions of the settings, I could almost smell and touch everything (I especially likes Goblin Market, it reminded me of the market from Stardust); and finally, decent to the reader ending (it still assumed a next book, however, I didn’t end on the huge I-will-bite-my head-off-if-I-can’t-get-my-hands-on-the-next-book-right-now cliffhanger).

There are a lot of things I liked about this book… Unfortunately, there was one thing that almost spoiled everything – there was something really wrong with the writing style. First of all, at least in the copy I was reading, I saw a lot of grammatical mistakes. I’m not a grammar wiz myself (I make a fair share of them myself), so I usually, don’t even notice grammatical errors and even if I do, I usually don’t mention them in my reviews. However, in this case my eyes were tripping over them, which made it hard to keep reading. On the numbered occasions I had to stop and reread a sentence or couple of sentences over again, just to understand what it was talking about. Second, there was something wrong with the style itself. Even after I finished The Demon's Lexicon I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly was it: point of view, tense, words chosen, pace, rhythm? I just couldn’t figure out or catch what it was. I just know that for some reason Sarah Rees Brennan’s prose wasn’t flowing for me – I was choking on it, despite the fact that plot itself made me want to read further and further.

Overall, The Demon's Lexicon was fast and enjoyable read. I’m planning to read the second installment in the series - The Demon's Covenant, hopping that Sarah Rees Brennan’s copy editors and Brennan herself fixed grammatical errors and whatever was wrong with the writing style.

Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta - Book Review #94

2010-10-06T10:35:00.006-04:00

Jellicoe Road

by Melina Marchetta

"What do you want from me?" he asks. What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him. More.

Abandoned by her mother on Jellicoe Road when she was eleven, Taylor Markham, now seventeen, is finally being confronted with her past. But as the reluctant leader of her boarding school dorm, there isn't a lot of time for introspection. And while Hannah, the closest adult Taylor has to family, has disappeared, Jonah Griggs is back in town, moody stares and all.

In this absorbing story by Melina Marchetta, nothing is as it seems and every clue leads to more questions as Taylor tries to work out the connection between her mother dumping her, Hannah finding her then and her sudden departure now, a mysterious stranger who once whispered something in her ear, a boy in her dreams, five kids who lived on Jellicoe Road eighteen years ago, and the maddening and magnetic Jonah Griggs, who knows her better than she thinks he does. If Taylor can put together the pieces of her past, she might just be able to change her future.
From goodreads.com

So I was confused for the first fifty pages, but I decided it was ok, it will start unveiling soon enough. I read fifty more pages and on the page one hundred I didn’t feel any different, I was still confused. No, something was going on in the book, the story was moving. However, how all these events were connected or what this all actually meant I still couldn’t figure out. I pushed myself for twenty five more pages and I was ready to give up. I remembered I've head bunch of good things about this book, in particular, and about the author, in general. However, I couldn’t remember what these good things were. So before completely giving up on the book, I wanted to read reviews on it. And what did I find? Almost every review started as mine did: I was confused for the first 50/100/150/200 pages. And it when a bit further: You have to push your way through first two hundred pages after that everything will start to become clear. After reading first paragraphs of about a dozen of reviews, I opened my book on the one hundred and twenty fifth page and started to push.

I kept feeling confused, more events were happening and I still didn’t see even one aspect of the story clearly. And I don’t like feeling confused for that long, because when I do, I start feeling stupid. And I don’t like feeling stupid, because when I do, I start feeling angry. As you can see, this is not a pleasant range of emotions.

After all, every reviewer I read was correct, somewhere around page two hundred and fifteen things and events started to become clear. After finishing the book, I have to admit, it was an interesting and touching story, about your basic good things: friendship, loyalty, love, family. However, I have to say this once more with the feeling: Are you fucking kidding me? Half of the book, yes HALF, reads like freaking prologue where reader doesn’t understand a thing and I’m not alone on this one. I’m fine with real prologues in a length of five/seven/fifteen pages, where you don’t understand anything. At least you can come back and reread this type and length of prologue after finishing a book with the knowledge to understand the events. But two hundred pages? Sorry, I can’t start rereading the book I just finished, the book that tortured me for the half of its length.

Even though at the end Jellicoe Road did deliver, I still couldn’t forgive its more than imperfect writing. (I blame this infection of confusion, which got a lot of readers, on the writing style. I believe that the story idea was really good.) I still couldn’t love this book, even though it has what to love it for. I hated the first half and I loved the second. So at the end my impression about the book in general is a mathematical average, which comes to… hmm… it was ok… I guess…

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain - Book Review #93

2010-10-05T11:02:00.002-04:00

The Postman Always Rings Twice

by James M. Cain

Frank Chambers, a drifter, is dropped from the back of a truck at a rundown rural diner. When he spots Cora, the owner's wife, he instantly decides to stay. The sexy young woman, married to Nick, a violent and thuggish boor, is equally attracted to the younger man and sees him as her way out of her hopeless, boring life. They begin a clandestine affair and plot to kill Nick, beginning their own journey toward destruction.
From goodreads.com

James M. Cain with his novel The Postman Always Rings Twice was a pioneer in the noir fiction genre; so I decided that the most appropriate way to introduce myself to the whole genre, I never read anything from, would be to read the book that started the genre itself. I have to confess my introduction went better than I expected.

The Postman Always Rings Twice is a very small novel, just a bit bigger than novella, hundred something pages long. I was always much more impressed by the authors who are known for their short stories or novellas. Somehow it always seems to me that to write a good short story takes much more than to write a series of ten novels. In a very limited space, short story’s author has to introduce the reader to the world, to the characters, show the characters’ development and don’t forget about the plot that brings this all together. Not many writers can create good short stories and novellas, like not many authors can produce a worthwhile poetry. I usually more suspicious to short books rather to huge heavy volumes, I’m uncertain that short books can deliver. No, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that it is more certain that book would be good if it is a bigger size. I just think it is easier to spoil short one than the longer one.

I read it in one sitting. It was marvelous. The atmosphere of fatality James M. Cain created with an undying, driving sense of suspense, even though the story is told from one of the murderer’s point of view. These completely immoral at the same time surprisingly likable characters, for whom their own suitability is a reason enough for murder and I was cheering for them all the way through. (Does this make me a bad person or does it make James M. Cain a genius for writing such characters?) I especially loved the interrogation scene in the hospital. It was brilliantly written, radiating such energy, anger, scare, panic and power. I also completely in love with the title and the meaning it represent – how the first ring of postman (God, the higher power, whatever else you like to call it)obviously didn’t reach Frank and Cora, however the second definitely got them. And the fatality itself in the title is genius as well – The Postman ALWAYS Rings Twice – you cannot miss the fist call and consider yourself save, you will always get the second.

So to summarize, I found The Postman Always Rings Twice brilliant, touching, disturbing, moving, sad and hilarious at the same time. This book does really contain all of that an even more.

Birthmarked by Caragh M. O'Brien - Book Review #92

2010-10-04T14:32:00.001-04:00

Birthmarked

by Caragh M. O'Brien

After climate change, on the north shore of Unlake Superior, a dystopian world is divided between those who live inside the wall, and those, like sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone, who live outside. It’s Gaia’s job to “advance” a quota of infants from poverty into the walled Enclave, until the night one agonized mother objects, and Gaia’s parents are arrested.

Badly scarred since childhood, Gaia is a strong, resourceful loner who begins to question her society. As Gaia’s efforts to save her parents take her within the wall, she herself is arrested and imprisoned.

Fraught with difficult moral choices and rich with intricate layers of codes, Birthmarked explores a colorful, cruel, eerily familiar world where one girl can make all the difference, and a real hero makes her own moral code.
From goodreads.com

So I guess there is nothing else left that I “have to do” instead of writing this review. No more excuses. I have to write it now. So here it goes:

I was ready to like this book. I really was. I loved the synopsis. It sounded intriguing and appealing. I loved the cover. In my opinion it showed the atmosphere that synopsis promised to us. So everything was looking greatly with a tiny exception to which I didn’t pay any attention at that moment: I added this book sometime ago to my to-read list and until recently I was more than sure that it still wasn’t released, because I haven’t heard anything about this book. So imagine my surprise when I found out that it was released and not just released but in March 2010. I was pleasantly surprised (I can read this book now!), but as I already said I didn’t pay any attention to this. Maybe I should have…

And so I started reading, impatiently awaiting the great story I was expecting. Unfortunately, it never came. I don’t really know where I should start about what I didn’t like in this book. Should I start from flat, unbelievable, unreal, unlikable characters? Or should I start from one of the weakest plots I could ever remember, full of repetitions, unnecessary explanations that was moving with the speed of a snail? (At least this book had a plot! I probably should mention this as an advantage over some of the YA novels that completely lacking it.) Or maybe I should start from the atmosphere this book failed to create – dystopian world? (There wasn’t an evil, totalitarian government, which I consider one of the main component for the dystopia. Enclave read like small hooligans, not like The Big Brother that is watching you.)

It was a real torture for me to read this book. I was bored out of my mind and even my own sarcasm about one or another scene in this book didn’t make the process of reading it at least bearable. I only finished it to be dead sure that I didn’t miss anything, because I had quite high hopes for this one.

I’m not going to say anything else about Birthmarked, I spent too much time reading it already and I just can’t bear to spent more time to write full, logical, reasonable review with examples from the text. The only thing I’m going to say – it was a great idea and very poor execution.

Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers - Book Review #91

2010-09-30T10:14:00.001-04:00

Some Girls Are

by Courtney Summers

Climbing to the top of the social ladder is hard--falling from it is even harder. Regina Afton used to be a member of the Fearsome Fivesome, an all-girl clique both feared and revered by the students at Hallowell High... until vicious rumors about her and her best friend's boyfriend start going around. Now Regina's been "frozen out" and her ex-best friends are out for revenge. If Regina was guilty, it would be one thing, but the rumors are far from the terrifying truth and the bullying is getting more intense by the day. She takes solace in the company of Michael Hayden, a misfit with a tragic past who she herself used to bully. Friendship doesn't come easily for these onetime enemies, and as Regina works hard to make amends for her past, she realizes Michael could be more than just a friend... if threats from the Fearsome Foursome don't break them both first.

Tensions grow and the abuse worsens as the final days of senior year march toward an explosive conclusion in this dark new tale from the author of Cracked Up To Be.
From goodreads.com

Courtney Summers fast and furious becoming my favorite contemporary YA author. I read her debut novel Cracked Up To Be somewhere at the beginning of this year and it was awesome. Her second novel - Some Girls Are – is equally fantastic. I couldn’t put the book down. No, literally, I couldn’t.

The reason I love Courtney Summers’s works that much is how honestly she manages to talk about most difficult, most awful and the ugliest issues teenagers (or anyone at that matter) are going through. Not only Summers’s voice is honest, she is also telling her stories without giving her personal opinion, without making any moral statements and definitely without shoving this statement into reader’s throat. She is only stating facts and letting readers decide for themselves what they saw in the story, what lessons they learn if any… And this is precisely what makes a great book for me.

I never was in The US High School, so I can’t really tell, if what Courtney Summers is writing is somehow resembling truth or not. Nevertheless, I myself was in High School, even if it wasn’t in The US and I can tell you these schools are not that different, there are still teenagers who attend them. However, I heard a lot of stories from different people and it is seems to me that Summers’s stories quite possibly could have happened, if didn’t, in the real life. And this is a real horror. Do you think movies or books about maniacs serial killers are horror? Do you think stories about vicious paranormal creatures are horror? Read Courtney Summers and think again.

I’m usually quite hesitant to recommend any books to the people I don’t know very close. However, I would recommend Courtney Summers’s books to literally anyone, to any person on the street. I believe that any person either this is a man or a woman, teenager or senior citizen, rich or poor, lawyer or backer – anyone can find something in Summers’s books, because they are not really about teenagers or high schools, they are about people and relationships between them.

The Candidates (Delcroix Academy) by Inara Scott - Book Review #90

2010-09-29T09:42:00.000-04:00

The Candidates (Delcroix Academy)

by Inara Scott

Dancia Lewis is far from popular. And that's not just because of her average grades or her less-than-glamorous wardrobe. In fact, Dancia's mediocrity is a welcome cover for her secret: whenever she sees a person threatening someone she cares about, things just...happen. Cars skid. Structures collapse. Usually someone gets hurt. So Dancia does everything possible to avoid getting close to anyone, believing this way she can suppress her powers and keep them hidden.

But when recruiters from the prestigious Delcroix Academy show up in her living room to offer her a full scholarship, Dancia's days of living under the radar may be over. Only, Delcroix is a school for diplomats' kids and child geniuses--not B students with uncontrollable telekinetic tendencies. So why are they treating Dancia like she's special? Even the hottest guy on campus seems to be going out of his way to make Dancia feel welcome.

And then there's her mysterious new friend Jack, who can't stay out of trouble. He suspects something dangerous is going on at the Academy and wants Dancia to help him figure out what. But Dancia isn't convinced. She hopes that maybe the recruiters know more about her "gift" than they're letting on. Maybe they can help her understand how to use it...But not even Dancia could have imagined what awaits her behind the gates of Delcroix Academy.
From goodreads.com

Mysterious boarding school on the hill behind tall heavy iron gates with secret passages and full of most talented kids from all around the country. Full scholarship and open doors to the bright future. The only thing is required from you is to take a pledge to use your talents only for the good. Two gorgeous and mysterious guys. No parental control whatsoever. Also throw a very powerful paranormal talent on top of this all and you will get a first installment The Candidates of Delcroix Academy series. What's not to like? This is precisely what I thought when I was picking up this book.

And it began just the way I expected. Inara Scott’s description of Delcroix Academy and its inhabitants might be a cliché, but still made me shiver. Dancia’s paranormal talent – telekinesis – made me long for such a power. An electric shock from the simple handshake made my eyes pop. A guy asking for help to run away from the car driven by an obvious liar in a black, can’t-see-through sunglasses made me want to turn pages faster.

It’s all started fabulous. Unfortunately, it all went downhill from there. As you can see in my above described disposition, I was ready to love this book and I really wanted to, but I couldn’t. After initial fifty or so pages it became very boring and dull, everything that has been mentioned already went over and over again in rounds. I gave up counting how many times Dancia told anyone or thought that she doesn’t belong to Delcroix Academy, how she was mediocre and not good at anything. It seemed like Inara Scott was dragging and beating out the mystery about Delcroix Academy’s purpose for too long.

There were two things that annoyed me more than anything else in the book. First of all - Dancia’s age. I couldn’t believe she was only fourteen years old. She acted and reasoned too mature for her age. I understand, she could be a mature person, considering that she lost her parent when she was very young. However, I find it quite unbelievable that even a mature person wouldn’t at least rarely act for her age and Dancia never did. Second, I couldn’t believe how easily Dancia left her beloved, very old and helpless in some areas grandmother and went to live in Delcroix Academy. She only rarely mentioned that she was worried about her grandmother, but she never throughout the whole book didn’t do anything to show that worry. It seemed like she was only remembering about grandmother when she needed a lift from school to home on the weekends.

To summarize The Candidates wasn’t a bad book. It just needed a bit more work and a bit more plot for its size. The writing style wasn’t something glorious, but wasn’t horrid either. Unfortunately, this book turned out to be as Dancia, the main character, thinks about herself – just mediocre.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey - Book Review #89

2010-09-28T10:20:00.000-04:00

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

by Ken Kesey

Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the seminal novel of the 1960s that has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the awesome powers that keep them all imprisoned.
From goodreads.com

This was one of the hardest books for me to go through. However, it stands out from all other books I had difficulty reading. It wasn’t boring. It wasn’t dragging. The subject wasn’t uninteresting to me. It wasn’t difficult to read because of its language.

The thing is - I watched the movie some five or so years ago and I remembered it too well, even though I watched it only once. So I knew too well how it’s going to end and this knowledge as pressing on me like a huge cement block. With every page I read, I knew that I was getting closer and closer to that inevitable, shattering, devastating ending. I knew that and I couldn’t bring myself to read another page to bring this moment closer.

I didn’t have any delusions that book might end somehow differently than the movie. However, I still was rooting for McMurphy to make different choices, for everyone else to stick up to him, for Big Nurse Ratched to be different. But like Chief Bromden said it couldn’t have went any other way. What happened would have happened anyway, no matter what.

Despite the fact that I could only bring myself to read a couple of pages a day, I still liked this book. It has such a power stored inside its covers, like an explosion wave that blows you out, destroying everything on its way, once you open the book and read a word. This is the book about the difference between sanity and insanity. This is the book about the difference between freedom and slavery and where the line dividing these two lays. This is a book about choices between coping with situation and rebelling over it or maybe you will choose the third option of creating your own little world and living in it closing out everything from outside.

What else can I add? Read it, think about it, discuss it! This book will make you look differently on the choices you made, making and will make.

The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe - Book Review #88

2010-09-27T10:11:00.001-04:00

The Pit and the Pendulum

by Edgar Allan Poe

In The Pit And The Pendulum author Edgar Allan Poe weaves the story of a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, tried and condemned to death and locked in a horrific torture chamber to meet his doom at the hands of his sadistic keepers.

From barnesandnoble.com

I’m not the biggest fan of Edgar Poe. On the other hand I didn’t read too many of his works to make a decision if I like his works in general or not. Somehow, I never saw or felt his stories as a horror. I just never was really scared by his stories. I understand why other people view them as horror, but never actually felt this way myself. Though, I always considered Edgar Poe’s stories as mysteries. I was never able to guess correctly how any of stories going to end.

It bothered me for some time why I wasn’t horrified by Edgar Poe’s prose, like most of the people were. For quite some time I was blaming it on my not too good of a fantasy. I was thinking that I can’t really imagine thing that Edgar Poe was describing, these events somehow didn’t become real enough to me to be scared of.

After reading The Pit and the Pendulum, I think, I finally understood why I wasn’t afraid. I think it has to do with Edgar Poe’s writing style. For instance, The Pit and the Pendulum is written from the first person point of view, in cases like this I usually expect a more personal approach to the story – sometimes messy, sometime illogical, sometimes stupid. However, in The Pit and the Pendulum, the voice of the main character, the person from which point of view the story is told, sounds to me as too calm and too objective, too rational for the person who is in the unknown pit and the death is lurking just around the corner. His voice sounds too rational to me because of the way he describes things – in full details. It seems like the hero himself is not paralyzed with the fear or taking by despair, because he can clearly see and evaluate the situation. No, I can give him a benefit of the doubt and consider that he is an extraordinary person who can act calm and rational in such situations, which would mean that he is not scared and can get out if this situation. So why should I be scared for him? I’m not, I’m confident in such rational hero. I believe he will find his way out of this situation.

Besides the fact that I don’t consider it to be a horror, I still enjoyed The Pit and the Pendulum. The mystery part was great, as usual for all Edgar Poe’s stories. The story was so short that it seems like it doesn’t give you enough time to try to figure thing out. However, I think time is not the issue here, because Edgar Poe gives multiple clues to the reader during the story. Somehow, my brain and my eyes just decide to ignore them until the very ending when everything is revealed.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse - Book Review #87

2010-09-24T10:29:00.000-04:00

Siddhartha

by Hermann Hesse

In the shade of a banyan tree, a grizzled ferryman sits listening to the river. Some say he's a sage. He was once a wandering shramana &, briefly, like thousands of others, he followed Gotama the Buddha, enraptured by his sermons. But this man, Siddhartha, was not a follower of any but his own soul.

Born son of a Brahmin, Siddhartha was blessed in appearance, intelligence & charisma. In order to find meaning in life, he discarded his promising future for the life of a wandering ascetic. Still, true happiness evaded him. Then a life of pleasure & titillation merely eroded away his spiritual gains until he was just like all the other "child people," dragged around by his desires.
From goodreads.com

I started to read Siddhartha only because of… let’s say a reason (it is too long to explain and, besides, it is irrelevant). The important thing, I would probably never read it if that reason didn’t arise. Unfortunately, that reason turned out to be not a reason at all, but a big misunderstanding. However, since I’ve started reading the book already and it was a tiny one, I decided to stick with it and finish it.

Before starting reading Siddhartha, I had a vague understanding that it was about eastern philosophy or based on eastern philosophy. And this is precisely why I wasn’t planning to read this book. I’m either too smart or too stupid for the eastern philosophy (maybe both at the same time) or I’m too western and materialistic for that. Either way, half of the time it makes me laugh and another half of the time I’m rolling my eyes, thinking that it is too obvious and wondering why it has to be even mentioned.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, I didn’t change my opinion after finishing Siddhartha. I can’t say I hated it. No, I was completely indifferent towards it. I heard a lot of people saying that it was a challenge for them to go through this book. It wasn’t the case for me. Siddhartha seemed too simple and too predictable to me; too obvious. I was bored through the whole book, with the exceptions when big revelation moments happened. At these points I was laughing, because I couldn’t bring myself to share the hero’s astonishing enlightenments.

In conclusion, my suspicions were confirmed – this book just isn’t for me. I somewhat envy people who see this book as eye-opening. For me, it read like same old same.

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater - Book Review #86

2010-09-23T11:27:00.001-04:00

Shiver

by Maggie Stiefvater

The cold.
Grace has spent years watching the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf—her wolf—watches back. He feels deeply familiar to her, but she doesn't know why.

The heat.
Sam has lived two lives. As a wolf, he keeps the silent company of the girl he loves. And then, for a short time each year, he is human, never daring to talk to Grace...until now.

The shiver.
For Grace and Sam, love has always been kept at a distance. But once it's spoken, it cannot be denied. Sam must fight to stay human—and Grace must fight to keep him—even if it means taking on the scars of the past, the fragility of the present, and the impossibility of the future.
From goodreads.com

First time I read the synopsis of Shiver I got the impression that this book is not for me. Somehow the idea of love between mortal girl and a werewolf seemed sick to me. Think about it, you are in love, and I mean romantic love, with a dog… The only thought about it made me shiver. Don’t get me wrong I’m not against paranormal romance. I’m fine with mortal – vampire, mortal – fairy, mortal – almost any other paranormal creature love. However, the idea of werewolves or shapeshifters and a mortal is not for me. If you must say, I’m discriminating against them.

However, after a while since the release of the book, I kept hearing more and more positive reviews and none of them mentioned that this romance made people sick. I got curious how Maggie Stiefvater managed this slippery, as it seems to me, topic of love between a girl and a dog. I have to say that she didn’t disappoint me on this account. Somehow when Grace was kissing Sam, I didn’t think about him as a dog, only as a flash and blood human.

I really enjoyed Maggie Stiefvater’s prose. No, it wasn’t perfect, at times it was even rusty; however her sentences sometimes were very lyrical. Her metaphors sometimes were unexpected and beautiful, such as “the smell of unread words”.

I also found her ideas on werewolves quite original. There were no full moon that influenced a person to change into wolf; it was a temperature around and also a body temperature. I never heard anything like this and found it making a lot of sense. For me winter and a wolf somehow come together.

Unfortunately, despite all the good things I mentioned, I was bored through the most part of the book. It either I didn’t care about characters enough, or there were too much of Maggie Stiefvater’s lyricality and not enough action for me – I don’t know. The thing that I know – my mind kept wondering around and I couldn’t focus on events in the book.

I knew that Shiver is a first book in the trilogy when I started reading it. However, when I finished I was really surprised that there will be two more books, because the first one wrap up so nicely that, in my opinion, there were no need for the second one. It is like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty or any other classical fairytale that ends with “And they lived happily ever after”. Does this ending call for the second part? It doesn’t. Is it possible to write the second book, following the first one that ended like that? It sure is. So I will read the second book –Linger–just out of curiosity – what else can Maggie Stiefvater add to the story of Grace and Sam.

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin - Book Review #85

2010-09-21T11:34:00.000-04:00

by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Before Brave New World

Before 1984...There was...

WE

In the One State of the great Benefactor, there are no individuals, only numbers. Life is an ongoing process of mathematical precision, a perfectly balanced equation. Primitive passions and instincts have been subdued. Even nature has been defeated, banished behind the Green Wall. But one frontier remains: outer space. Now, with the creation of the spaceship Integral, that frontier -- and whatever alien species are to be found there -- will be subjugated to the beneficent yoke of reason.

One number, D-503, chief architect of the Integral, decides to record his thoughts in the final days before the launch for the benefit of less advanced societies. But a chance meeting with the beautiful I-330 results in an unexpected discovery that threatens everything D-503 believes about himself and the One State. The discovery -- or rediscovery -- of inner space...and that disease the ancients called the soul.

A page-turning SF adventure, a masterpiece of wit and black humor that accurately predicted the horrors of Stalinism, We is the classic dystopian novel. Its message of hope and warning is as timely at the end of the twentieth century as it was at the beginning.
From goodreads.com

What would you get if you mix philosophy and mathematics and use exclusively logic, at times so precise and undeniable that it can be compared to mechanics to tell the story? You would be a masterpiece We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

It is a very short novel. I would probably even call it novella. However, every word in this short text is important. The words in We not just there to fill in the space, they are bricks that build this story. You take out one and might miss the point, or worth you might ruin the whole story. Almost every sentence can be used as a quote. Almost every paragraph can be used as an epigraph.

"There is no final one; revolutions are infinite."

"You're in a bad way! Apparently, you've developed a soul."

"Along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox—the single most worthy path of the fearless mind ..."

"The speed of her tongue is not correctly calculated; the speed per second of her tongue should be slightly less than the speed per second of her thoughts -at any rate not the reverse."

"Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative"

These are just some quote, maybe not my most favorite ones, but I read We in Russian and don’t have an English translation on hands to give you more, which maybe not a bad thing, or I might ended up quoting the whole book, sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase.

I heard that a lot of people criticize Yevgeny Zamyatin’s writing style. I would have to disagree with that. First of all We is epistolary novel. In my opinion this make a story even more personal than if it is written from the first point of view. At the beginning of the story the writing style is rusty, almost mechanical. It reads like a collection of mottos approved by One State and Benefactor. However this is not Yevgeny Zamyatin’s writing style, it is D-503’s writing style - this is his notes. As story progress and the main character, D-503, evolves, so does his writing style. So based on this I would have to say that Yevgeny Zamyatin’s writing style is superb, because he was able to show the transformation of the character not only in the character’s actions, but also in character’s writing.

At first I found We’s ending to be devastating and heartbreaking. However, after I thought about the ending from the D-503 point of view I came to the conclusion that maybe it was the best ending for him in the giving circumstances, despite its devastating and heartbreaking nature.

There are a lot of things and at the same none at all that I can say to give We a justice it deserves. There are a lot of said before me and I’m sure there will be said even more after me. We is a timeless story about timeless issues that will never lose society’s interest. If you never read it, my advice would be to do so. Even if you won’t love it the way I did, it will most definitely give you food for thought.

Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters by Natalie Standiford - Book Review #84

2010-09-20T11:06:00.000-04:00

Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters

by Natalie Standiford

The Sullivan sisters have a big problem. On Christmas Day their rich and imperious grandmother gathers the family and announces that she will soon die . . .and has cut the entire family out of her will. Since she is the source of almost all their income, this means they will soon be penniless.

Someone in the family has offended her deeply. If that person comes forward with a confession of her (or his) crime, submitted in writing to her lawyer by New Year's Day, she will reinstate the family in her will. Or at least consider it.

And so the confessions begin....
From goodreads.com

For some reason I expected that this book will be largely dealing with aftermath of confessions. Maybe I thought that the confessions themselves won’t be as interesting as the reactions on these confessions. When I started reading the book, I got the feeling that my initial expectations were wrong, so I flipped through the pages and understood that confessions would be indeed the main focus of the story as the title told me.

When my expectation isn’t met, despite how silly or unreasonable they might be, I’m getting upset. I’m starting to blame the book, the author, even though not in a title, not in a synopsis, not in any interviews with author or publisher there weren’t anything that might have given me a reason for my expectations. And after all, it seems, they are, my expectations, nothing more but my fantasy. Every time it happens to me, I’m trying to be reasonable. After confirming that it wasn’t an author who misled me and indeed it was my fantasy, I’m trying not to take it on a book or on its writer. I’m trying to be objective. I honestly do! Unfortunately, I rarely succeeded.

So imagine my surprise that despite all of this, I ended up liking the book. I even had to admit that the structure Natalie Standiford chose was probably much better for the story then the one I imagined. What I liked the most about Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters was the writing style. First of all, it read like something teenage girls might have written. And second, Natalie Standiford did a great job to define voices of each three Sullivan sisters and to make them distinct. It almost felt like I read three separate books, by three different authors. Each individual voice helped to define each sister. Natalie Standiford didn’t have to tell the reader what temper each sister had, she made it known through how and what that particular sister was talking about.

I also liked the ending of Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters. I will lie if I will say that I didn’t see something among these lines coming, however through the entire story I had doubts that it might end somehow differently.

Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters is one of these books that unfortunately will not create a sensation among most of the YA readers, because the real value of the book, not in the flashy characters or unbelievable settings, it is in the writing craft itself and Natalie Standiford is an exceptionally skillful in that.

The DUFF (Designated Ugly Fat Friend) by Kody Keplinger - Book Review #83

2010-09-17T10:26:00.002-04:00

The DUFF (Designated Ugly Fat Friend)

by Kody Keplinger

Seventeen-year-old Bianca Piper is cynical and loyal, and she doesn't think she's the prettiest of her friends by a long shot. She's also way too smart to fall for the charms of man-slut and slimy school hottie Wesley Rush. In fact, Bianca hates him. And when he nicknames her "Duffy," she throws her Coke in his face.

But things aren't so great at home right now. Desperate for a distraction, Bianca ends up kissing Wesley. And likes it. Eager for escape, she throws herself into a closeted enemies-with-benefits relationship with Wesley.

Until it all goes horribly awry. It turns out that Wesley isn't such a bad listener, and his life is pretty screwed up, too. Suddenly Bianca realizes with absolute horror that she's falling for the guy she thought she hated more than anyone.
From goodreads.com

I would never picked up this book neither because of the synopsis (it sounded boring), not because of the cover (it is too generic), no because of the author (I’m trying to stay away from teenage writers. I have yet to see the one worth reading for someone who is older than thirteen). I read it because of rapturous reviews I saw. They said it is cynical, wit and smart and funny. They say Kody Keplinger is a new generation voice. I can’t say anything about new generation voice, however about cynical and wit – alas, I couldn’t find it.

What I found – was a teenager who was offended through her whole life, who spent too much time crying into her pillow, trying to come up with a phrases and wit remarks that she could have answered to her offenders. And one day this teenager decided to write down all these smart and cynical phrases she came up with and could never used in the real life, making herself a main character of her book.

No, making yourself into the main character of the book is not a bad thing. The bad thing is that all she imagined while crying into the pillow is completely unrealistic and cliché at the same time. The plot and dialogs turned out to be farfetched and predictable. I knew down to every word what would happen in the next pages, while I was reading.

Another thing that ruined and made this book even more childish then it already was - non-stop cursing. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against cursing. I think it is a great way to express your emotions or accent your point of view. However, when cursing is just for the sake of cursing itself, when it is not imaginative (Dexter’s sister and many other examples that I can’t remember right now), but blunt, like an old fisherman talk (fucking this, fucking that), it is reads vulgar and getting old too fast.

The only good thing I could find about this book was its solid structure - the begining, the middle and the end (unfortunately, I don’t know whose credit it is - Kody Keplinger or her editor). Thus is already a good thing, because apparently some authors right now (older than Kody Keplinger, if it makes any difference) can’t even do that. Unfortunately, The DUFF lacked any characterizations, characters were so plane, cardboardish and one dimensional, that I don’t even want to get into this. Plot was completely predictable. Dialogs were unrealistic. However, The DUFF was still a novel, not a mindless rant.

Despite my negative review, I think Kody Keplinger has a chance to become a worthwhile author. There is nothing in her prose that cannot be adjusted with a simple, old fashion practice and life experience.